New Dairy Testing Requirement Could Allow for Eradication of Avian Influenza in Cattle
Bernt Nelson
Economist
Chad Smith
Associate News Service Editor, NAFB
USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced a new federal directive on testing raw milk for avian influenza. Chad Smith has more.
Smith: The new APHIS federal rules on testing raw milk are part of a larger strategy to help mitigate the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza in dairy cattle, also protecting U.S. trade relations. Bernt Nelson, an economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation, said the goal is to get rid of H5N1 once and for all.
Nelson: This new order is essentially designed to complement the existing order by setting up a five stage testing protocol and response system. Now this is supposed to be completely up and running in about two months. They're going to be starting with states that have demonstrated proficiency in some of their testing programs.
Smith: Nelson said the testing plan progresses from the local level to eventually reach regionalization.
Nelson: In stage one, we’re standing up mandatory testing of national plants and silos. Stage two is determining a state's overall HPAI status in dairy cattle. Now, stage three involves detecting and responding to the virus in an affected state. Stage four will be demonstrating the ongoing absence of avian influenza in dairy cattle. If negative samples continue to show up, APHIS will continually decrease the number of samples as time goes on, eventually leading to stage five, which is demonstrating a state's freedom from the disease.
Smith: Nelson said the end goal is to completely eliminate the disease in dairy cattle.
Nelson: Now, in order to do this, we need to kind of implement these protocols on a regionalized basis to try and eliminate it herd by herd and then keep it out. So, another thing that's going on here is there are vaccines that are under development, and that will likely be a part of these protocols as we move forward.
Smith: Chad Smith, Washington.
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