Animals

Bird flu is racing through farms, but Northwest states are rarely testing workers - Investigate Midwest On a recent Monday morning, workers began their week on a large poultry farm in Franklin County, Washington, home to over 800,000 chickens. By the end of the day, avian flu had been discovered among some of those chickens. By the end of the week, four workers came down with the illness, which had infected […] Lauren Cross Investigate Midwest

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The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today confirmed 62 more avian flu outbreaks in dairy cattle, all involving California herds. The latest detections lift the state’s total since the end of August to 398 and the national total to 612.

California is the nation’s largest dairy producer, and outbreaks in the Central Valley have now affected nearly one-third of the state’s estimated 1,300 herd.

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As H5N1 bird flu continues to spread around the US, health officials recently found that 7 percent of dairy workers tested on farms in two states had evidence of recent infection — and some had signs of infection even when they didn’t feel sick.