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Vet says H5N1 federal order falls short

About six months after USDA issued a federal order requiring testing for Influenza A in livestock to mitigate the spread, the virus continues to affect livestock and humans.

USDA says there have been at least 160 confirmed cases of H5N1 in livestock in the past month across Idaho and California. And the Centers for Disease Control says there have been 39 confirmed human cases of Influenza A this year.

Keith Poulsen with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine says USDA’s federal order has fallen short.

“Some of us thought the federal order was a soft start to a more intensive, cohesive national surveillance, but there were a lot of variables that got in the way…we have to be more aggressive of understanding where the virus is.”

Poulsen says there’s a lack of consistency within each state on livestock testing and control measures due to economics and politics.

“Then, what happened was as disease went into new states, it really created quite a bit of infected farms. And really, when we think about the risks to people…this really isn’t a public health risk in the sense that people are spreading it person-to-person and the CDC just confirmed that,” he says. “But if we would have improved surveillance, we might not be in the same spot we are. It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback that.”

He says USDA has limited authority, only being allowed to test cattle moving across state borders.

“They don’t have the jurisdiction to do that surveillance or testing prior to movement within a state. That jurisdiction lies within the state animal health official or the state veterinarian. The other issue we saw with the federal order is it’s not testing the entire herd in a bulk tank sample or aggregate level sample, only testing 30 animals out of an entire group.”

He says that’s not enough to identify a virus quickly and a more aggressive, national approach is needed if the virus is going to be eliminated.

“It’s a complicated choice, a painful and expensive choice, but my opinion is the choice to not do something about this in the long run will cost exponentially more than fixing this now…I think we can absolutely eliminate to remove this from the herd, we just have to choose to do it.”

Poulsen says there are other tools coming from USDA, like vaccines, but a vaccine isn’t going to stop the virus from moving around and improvements start with surveillance.

At the end of October, USDA said it would be implementing a tiered strategy to collect milk samples to better assess where H5N1 is present.

“We will first test silos, going to processors who have accumulated significant amounts of milk. This testing sometimes gives you an indication the virus is there before it shows up in cows,” said Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack. “We’ll start in states that have the virus so we know exactly where in the state there are issues…and then, we’ll begin a strategic process in a tiered way until we get to all 50 states.

Vilsack says there will be multiple stages. If there’s a virus in the silos, USDA will then begin the process of moving to more bulk tank testing on-farm “so they can advance biosecurity.” He says USDA will pay for the sampling and shipping costs and the agency is putting together a formal guidance as to how this will work.

Poulsen says improved surveillance programs like this can help improve the situation, but “the devil is the details and all the details aren’t finalized yet.”

Hear the Poulsen interview.

Hear a media Q&A on H5N1 with Secretary Vilsack.