How is Conn. keeping milk safe from bird flu?

Virus has infected at least 36 herds in nine different states

Connecticut officials say they will be much more prepared than they were for COVID-19 if a deadly flu virus now affecting dairy cows and other animals makes the jump to humans.

But questions remain about what the state is doing to protect its milk supply, keep farm workers safe and prepare for the possibility of another human pandemic.

“We’ve been planning for avian flu for decades,” Dr. Manisha Juthani, commissioner of the state Department of Public Health, said in an interview Thursday. “We’re very, very alert and aware, because this is one of those threats that we’ve been waiting for.”

Experts agree the country is on much better footing when it comes to pandemic preparedness than it was in early 2020, when COVID exposed problems with the nation’s public health infrastructure. But they say gaps still remain.

Meanwhile, state officials have not shared details about some of their own preparedness steps.

“Connecticut, I think we’re doing as well as any state,” said Dr. Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency room physician and the dean of the Yale School of Public Health.

“But I do worry about that federal backup,” Ranney added.

A flu that started in birds jumps to mammals

Influenza A, or H5N1 — more commonly called “bird flu,” “avian flu” or “avian influenza” — began to spread in poultry in China around 1997 after it was first discovered in wild birds, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The current worldwide outbreak of H5N1 started in 2022 when the virus began to spread widely in poultry farms and domestic chickens in the United States and Canada, according to the CDC.

Alarm bells went off in late 2022 and early 2023, when bird flu began to spread widely in mammals — reportedly killing tens of thousands of seals and sea lions, including at least 300 in New England.

The virus was first detected in dairy cows in March, according to the CDC. Since then, it’s infected at least 36 herds in nine different states — a number experts have said is likely an undercount.

To date, there have been 888 cases of people contracting H5N1 from animals, and 463 deaths, according to the World Health Organization — a fatality rate of about 52 percent.

But despite these cases of animal-to-human transmission, there’s no evidence so far that H5N1 can spread easily between people — what scientists call “human-to-human” transmission. But the fact that it’s spreading so widely among mammals has raised concerns about a potential human outbreak.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that it will jump to humans,” said Dr. Albert Ko, who teaches epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.

“But certainly,” Ko added, “much more surveillance is required.”

To date, there have been 888 cases of people contracting H5N1 from animals, and 463 deaths, according to the World Health Organization — a fatality rate of about 52 percent.

How dairy farms in state are handling the outbreak

Connecticut’s Avian Influenza Monitoring and Response Plan was last updated in 2017, before the current outbreak, and does not address how to protect cattle or dairy farms.

But bird flu hasn’t been detected in dairy cattle or farm workers in Connecticut to date, and state agricultural officials say they’ve been working closely with public health officials, local dairies and industry groups to monitor the situation.

State Agriculture Commissioner Bryan P. Hulbert said his agency has emphasized the importance of measures to keep dairy animals and workers safe. It has advised dairies what the disease reporting requirements are and what to look for in animals and farm workers should they become symptomatic, according to Hulbert

“I think dairy farmers are very well aware,” he said. “If there’s a market scare regarding the safety of consuming milk, that’s going to severely impact their operations.”

The USDA has ordered dairy cattle be tested prior to being shipped between states, whether or not they have symptoms. It has also issued guidance that includes excluding birds and cats from livestock areas, not moving sick or exposed cows and using personal protective equipment like masks and gloves.

CT Insider queried three local dairies, local milk producer Hood and the Dairy Farmers of America milk marketing cooperative. about what biosecurity or testing measures they have in place. Two local dairies responded.

The UConn Dairy said it has stopped giving public tours and made respirators and gloves available to its workers, although it does not require its workers to use them. UConn also keeps its dairy and poultry operations strictly separate, according to Mary-Margaret Smith, who manages educational programs for the UConn Animal Science Department.

“We have a closed herd, so we don’t receive any cows,” Smith said. “If we were selling animals to another farm or breeder and it was a lactating cow, her milk would have to be tested.”

Dairy Farmers of America, a marketing cooperative of 11,000 dairy farms that owns the Garelick Farms milk brand, said in a written statement it continues to “work closely with the industry and regulatory agencies such as the USDA to guide farmers.”

The company did not say how many of its dairies, national or local, were implementing additional protective measures.

The state department of agriculture said it plans to make N95 masks and other personal protective equipment from the state’s stockpile available to dairy farm workers but has not done so yet.

“The intent is to make PPE available as soon as possible,” wrote Connecticut Department of Agriculture spokesperson Rebecca Eddy in an email received on May 9. “Our team met with DPH earlier today to determine the stockpile of PPE available. We will be notifying livestock farm workers and workers who may be in contact with raw milk with information on how they can obtain PPE.”

Milk is safe, officials say — as long as it’s pasteurized

The Food and Drug Administration found that about 20 percent of commercial milk it tested contained dead avian flu virus. The agency has, thus far, been unable to grow avian influenza from commercial, pasteurized milk samples — meaning that so far, there have been no living remnants of the virus. The FDA has, so far, said that the commercial, pasteurized milk supply is safe.

The FDA wrote a lengthy statement to CT Insider saying that it did not test milk from Connecticut specifically for H5N1. The agency stated that its efforts were designed to “study and assess the safety of pasteurized milk products at a national level.”

“The pooled pre-pasteurization milk study is for the purpose of better understanding the viable virus levels in milk being sent to processing plants for pasteurization,” wrote an FDA spokesperson. “As such, only states with confirmed H5N1 dairy herd infections were eligible to participate in this study, which did not include Connecticut.”

The agency said that its retail sampling effort was “not designed to measure or detect the presence of H5N1 on specific premises” but to confirm the effectiveness of pasteurization on the virus. Retail milk processors may process milk from multiple herds in multiple states making retail products a bad candidates for identifying where H5N1 might be, the agency wrote.

“What we are identifying with H5N1 is that having gone through the pasteurization process, yes there were fragments, but these fragments are not infectious,” Dr. Juthani said.

The prevalence of these fragments indicated there may be undetected herds of H5N1-positive dairy cattle, according to Juthani.

“To be clear, I would not recommend raw milk for any number of reasons, H5N1 being just the most recent reason,” she said.