U.S. agriculture officials have mandated that dairy cattle moving between states must be tested for the bird flu virus in an effort to track and control the growing outbreak. This federal order comes after the detection of inactivated remnants of the Type A H5N1 virus in milk samples during processing and on store shelves. However, health officials have emphasized that these remnants do not pose a known risk to human health or the milk supply.
The new order, effective Monday, requires every lactating cow to test negative for the virus before being allowed to move to a different state. This measure aims to help authorities understand the spread of the virus. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service administrator mentioned that they are capable of conducting tens of thousands of tests daily.
Avian influenza was initially identified in dairy cows in March and has since been detected in nearly three dozen herds across eight states. This outbreak is an escalation of the highly pathogenic avian influenza transmitted by wild birds. To date, over 90 million birds in commercial flocks in the U.S. have either succumbed to the virus or been euthanized to prevent further spread.
Two farmworkers in the U.S. have been infected with bird flu during this outbreak. Health officials have conducted tests on 23 individuals for bird flu, while 44 people who were exposed to infected animals are under monitoring. Recent findings from Kansas revealed that the virus may be adapting to infect more animals, with the detection of the H5N1 virus in the lung tissue of a dairy cow that was culled and sent for slaughter.
Despite these developments, there is currently no evidence that the virus is evolving to become more transmissible to humans, according to officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
