Farm workers at Colorado dairy operations continue to face real risks from H5N1 avian influenza — commonly called bird flu — as the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is again running its 2026 'Gear Up, Wash Up, Step Up' worker safety campaign targeting dairy workers and farm employees in states with confirmed H5N1 activity in cattle. First launched during the 2025 dairy outbreak that spread H5N1 to herds across multiple states, the campaign has been repeated this summer as H5N1 remains present in U.S. dairy cattle herds and sporadic human infections among farm workers continue to be documented.
Colorado was one of the first and most heavily affected states during the 2024–2025 H5N1 dairy cattle outbreak, with multiple confirmed infected herds across the state's northeastern cattle corridor. As of June 2026, the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has confirmed H5N1 in poultry flocks across 12 states in 2026, with the dairy cow transmission chain that began in 2024 representing an ongoing occupational health risk for an estimated 500,000 agricultural workers in the United States.
