A recent video of several cows lying dead on the side of a road in California’s Central Valley sparked biosafety concerns amid an outbreak of bird flu across the United States.
The dead cow was huddled together, and a swarm of flies buzzed around it. video indicates. Dr. Crystal Heath, a veterinarian with the Berkeley, Calif.-based nonprofit organization Hour Honor, filmed the video on Oct. 8 and shared it on Twitter on Oct. 17. The dead livestock were located in front of Mendonsa Farm and Land O’Lakes Borges. Both are dairy products located in Tulare County, Heath said. At the time, there were no visible signs of a potential biosafety risk the exposed carcass posed to the public, Heath added.
On October 8, I visited Tulare County, California, and found a dead cow lying on the side of the road after being infected with H5N1 avian influenza. This was the first publicly available footage of a cow infected with avian influenza, and the story was published in Newsweek magazine and local newspapers. pic.twitter.com/mt2bhhsk2l
— Crystal Heath DVM (@drcrystalheath) October 17, 2024
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), caused by the H5N1 virus, first hit poultry farms on October 8, 2022. According to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Then I jumped into a dairy farm in March.and The number of confirmed infections is 333. Among dairy cows in 14 states so far. As of October 17, approximately 133 dairy livestock have been infected in California, making it the state with the highest number of cases. Of the 133 cases, 99 occurred in the past 30 days.
More than half of the barn cats fed raw milk at the dairy farm where the first positive case was reported in Texas died after drinking the milk. According to US news and world reports.
“[D]”Oddly enough, the first sign that the facility was infected was when a barn cat died after drinking milk infected with bird flu,” Heath said in the video.
“To date, CDC has confirmed that 13 farmworkers in California have been infected with H5N1 avian influenza,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced. said. (Related: WHO confirms first human death from H5N2 avian influenza in Mexico)
Four poultry workers in Franklin County have tested positive, making Washington the sixth state to report human H5N1 cases, according to the state Department of Health. said Sunday.
California will be the largest producer of milk in 2023, According to United States Department of Agriculture. We have 1,710 dairy cows, the most in the state. 2024 data From the Statista program. Approximately 30% of California’s dairy cows are in Tulare County. February news release Researchers at the University of California, Davis have shown that.
The USDA, Food and Drug Administration, CDC, state veterinary and public health officials are all investigating the outbreak. CDC officials are on the ground in California to help stop the spread of the virus, the CDC said.
The disease appears to be underreported in various other states, and the dairy market believes that both the transmissibility of the H5N1 virus and California’s testing requirements are reasons for the high number of cases in California. said expert Nathaniel Donay. said Los Angeles Times.
Nathaniel Donay added that the prognosis looks grim, with 600 cases expected to occur in the coming weeks.
This prediction is not unrealistic, John Courseland, a retired veterinary epidemiologist from the Department of Agriculture, told the LA Times.
If that were to become a reality, he added, “I would hazard a guess that the California dairy outbreak would be the most severe and widespread animal disease outbreak in history.”
