The Biden administration poured $199 million into the fight against the H5N1 bird flu virus, which was identified in cattle for the first time seven weeks ago, a worrisome step closer to people. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said dairy farmers are eligible for up to $28,000 in USDA aid in three months to help eradicate the virus from their herds, and Health Secretary Xavier Becerra announced new funding among public health agencies to “test, treat, prevent” the virus from spreading.
Together, USDA and HHS committed $199 million to aid dairy producers and to protect public health. To date, the virus has been detected in 42 herds in nine states, from Idaho to North Carolina. Texas and Michigan account for 22 of the herds. Some analysts say it is likely that more herds are affected but farmers are reluctant to step forward. An FDA test of milk purchased at grocery stores found H5N1 virus fragments in one of every five samples. Further tests showed pasteurization killed the virus.
“The risk to the public from this outbreak remains low,” said Becerra during a teleconference with Vilsack on Friday. Vilsack added, “It’s important to note that thus far we have found no changes significantly in the virus that would make it more transmissible to humans.”
Dairy farmers with infected herds are eligible for five types of financial assistance. They include up to $2,000 a month to farms that provide personal protection equipment (PPE) to workers and encourage them to be tested for the virus; up to $1,500 a month to improve biosecurity standards; up to $2,000 a month for heat treatment of milk that must be discarded from infected cows; up to $10,000 for veterinary care of treating infected cows; and up to $100 a month for the cost of shipping tests from ill or suspect cattle. In three months, a farm could receive $28,000. Altogether, $98 million was available from the USDA.
In addition, Vilsack said the USDA would tap a disaster relief program to compensate dairy farmers for lost production. The bird flu virus “does dramatically limit milk production, which can cause economic loss for producers with affected premises,” he said.
“Our public health officials have been preparing for avian influenza, an outbreak of this kind, for more than 20 years,” said Becerra. “It is critical we are well positioned to test, treat, prevent this virus from spreading.”
The Department of Health and Human Services would provide $93 million to the Centers for Disease Control to expand its monitoring of people exposed to animals infected with the H5N1 virus, to “scale up” work on H5N1 vaccines for people, and to distribute more test kits for the virus, said Becerra.
An additional $8 million would go to the FDA to continue testing and other steps to ensure the safety of the milk supply.
The National Milk Producers Federation said it would “do what we can to help dairy farmers understand and benefit from these initiatives.”
There was one known case of human infection with the H5N1 virus from contact with dairy cattle – a dairy farmworker in Texas, reported on April 1.
Dairy cows develop relatively mild illness from the bird flu virus; a loss of appetite, a marked reduction in milk output, and fever. Among birds, the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus is deadly. Nearly 91 million birds in U.S. domestic flocks have died of bird flu or been culled in infected flocks since February 2022 in efforts to prevent the spread of the virus.
To read the HHS/USDA fact sheet on the latest efforts to control virus, click here.