The Agriculture Department will dramatically increase its testing of the nation’s milk supply for bird flu under a new federal order, it announced Friday, as the agency continues to struggle to contain a bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle first confirmed in March.
The order, which officials previewed in October, will require testing of raw milk samples for the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, from various operations that handle the milk, including dairy farms, transportation companies and processing facilities. Six states — California, Colorado, Michigan, Mississippi, Oregon and Pennsylvania — will be part of USDA’s first round of testing.
That’s a considerable expansion from a previous federal order, issued this past spring, that required testing lactating dairy cattle before they were transported across state lines. But the virus, which has infected roughly half of California’s dairy herds — one of the country’s top milk-producing states — continues to spread, costing farmers significant financial losses and creating more opportunities for the virus to mutate into something that could spread from person to person.
“This new milk testing strategy … will provide a roadmap for states to protect the health of their dairy herds,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement.
