Here at the Center for Biological Diversity, we’re closely monitoring the outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, H5N1, aka bird flu. Wild animals like endangered California condors and even a polar bear have contracted H5N1. So have more than 180 other species of wild birds and mammals, including federally protected wildlife. This virus also has been decimating marine mammals, along with animals confined at meat and dairy operations, causing the ecological havoc of mass culling and disruptions to food chains.
Factory Farming and Disease
Factory farming is at the heart of the latest spread of bird flu. The environmental and health threats posed by factory farms too often go unaddressed due to this powerful industry’s ability to evade regulation. Cats at dairies are dying from bird flu, which appears to be spreading between wild birds, cats, and dairy cattle. Bird flu has led to the euthanizing of more than 90 million poultry in 48 states since 2022 (half a billion globally in the last few years).
Confining farmed animals in unnaturally dense populations in industrial facilities causes explosive rates of viral transmission. It also dramatically increases opportunities for mutations that make the virus better adapted to new kinds of hosts, like humans and wild animals.
How We’re Taking Action
Community and wildlife conservation groups, including the Center, are calling on the Centers for Disease Control to ramp up the federal response to bird flu in factory-farmed dairy cattle. We sent a letter urging the CDC to improve testing of farmworker exposure to H5N1 and coordinate a data-driven interagency response.
Dairy, Beef, and the Rise of Bird Flu
Bird flu is confirmed in nearly 50 cattle herds across nine states. A third farmworker tested positive in late May after exposure to infected cattle and developed respiratory symptoms. It’s hard to really know how many cattle have been infected, and that’s down to an egregious lack of testing and reporting. Federal agencies have been testing mostly sick-appearing animals — only a few cattle within large herds. Motivations to self-report may not be high if livelihoods are on the line.
We know from COVID-19 that public data, tracking, and reporting are vital to containing a viral outbreak. Yet agencies are making the same mistake with a slow initial response.
Bird flu may have been circling in cattle as early as December 2023. There were early warning signs of an outbreak on dairy farms this February. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture only announced the outbreak in March. By April the USDA had shared only partial genome data and indicated that some farmers aren’t letting them properly test. State agriculture agencies also appear to be complicating the CDC’s ability to track the spread of the disease.
Bird flu viral particles have been found in dairy products on shelves in 20% to 40% of samples tested (20% officially, 40% in an informal academic survey) and in wastewater. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has also conducted tests on ground beef. Right now both the USDA and the CDC are heavily leaning on the processes of pasteurization and fully cooking foods like beef and eggs to keep people safe.
Some health experts recommend drinking only ultra-pasteurized dairy and not consuming any undercooked beef, though the safest and most environmentally responsible route is to avoid these products altogether. Beef and dairy products are top food sources of emissions, habitat loss, and wildlife killings. Yet some people are consuming raw milk — intentionally.
Action Now is Crucial
A new study provides the clearest picture yet of how biodiversity loss and climate change fuel the rise of disease. A warmer world with degraded ecosystems is ripe for the proliferation of pathogens.
What will it take for people in the United States to step back from the factory farms spreading disease and destroying so much of our planet? Community health and safety, like factory farms themselves, are an issue of environmental justice. Experts have long warned that factory farms are pandemic incubators, putting the most marginalized at the greatest risk.
To prevent avian flu from becoming the next pandemic, agencies should be testing animals and workers — including at nondairy operations. If this virus takes off in hogs, we may be unprepared for the ensuing crisis. Pigs tend to be better conveyors of disease for human infections. Though recent reported U.S. cases have been mild, the global fatality rate from H5N1 infections is a staggering 51%.
Avian influenza has killed millions of farmed and wild animals but isn’t yet widespread in humans. We’ve seen what can happen with COVID-19. We must redouble efforts to protect biodiversity and stop the next pandemic. That means shifting away from industries like factory farming.
What You Can Do
Read the Center’s letter to the CDC urging a stronger federal response.
Read about the Center’s work during the COVID-19 pandemic and learn how on-site emergency culling creates severe environmental issues.
Questions? Email me at [email protected].
For the wild,
