The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday an additional $1 billion to help the nation’s poultry industry combat an accelerating outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza, which has devastated farmers and driven the price of eggs to record highs.
The infusion is part of a new strategy under the Trump administration that aims to boost financial relief to farmers whose flocks have been affected by the bird flu and aid in increasing biosecurity measures to prevent the spread from wild birds to domestic poultry operations. It also sets aside funds to develop vaccines and therapeutics for laying chickens.
But the new plan does not include any additional efforts to curb the spread of the virus among dairy cattle. Since first being confirmed in Texas last March, outbreaks of H5N1 have been detected in 973 dairy herds across 17 states.
The shift signals the new administration’s approach to the disease as primarily an issue of economic concern, but leaves questions about how the USDA intends to manage the threat H5N1-infected cows pose to people.
Since March 2024, there have been 70 human cases of bird flu — more than half of them among people who work on dairy farms — as a result of contact with infected animals. And although most people experienced only minor symptoms, one infection, in a person who tended to a backyard flock in Louisiana, was fatal. The ongoing spread among cows has raised fears that it could become an endemic pathogen in a species that has considerable contact with people, increasing the odds the virus could one day evolve in ways that make it better at spreading to and among people and laying the groundwork for the next pandemic.
“As long as there’s that type of transmission going on, there’ll always be an increased risk of transmission to humans,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. He questioned the effectiveness of attempting to solve the H5N1 problem in one species but not another. “Unless you really eradicate it out of dairy [cows] and poultry production, humans are going to be at risk.”
In a statement to STAT, the USDA said that “The measures announced today focus on strengthening biosecurity and the response for the poultry industry, however, USDA will continue to work closely with dairy producers, as they are a critical part of the HPAI [highly pathogenic avian influenza] conversation and response.”
Since the start of the outbreaks in dairy cattle, the agency has maintained that its goal is ultimately to eradicate H5N1 from cows, which, when infected, shed large amounts of the virus in their milk. Last year, the USDA approved the use of more than $2.1 billion in emergency funds to address H5N1 in commercial livestock and poultry, including $834 million for a new national milk surveillance program. The agency had suggested that regular monitoring of bulk milk tanks and measures like a requirement that cows moving across state lines be tested prior to transport would lead to a situation where the virus would run out of new animals to infect.
But recent events have dimmed those prospects. The launch of bulk milk testing in late 2024 led to the discoveries of new introductions of H5N1 in cows, likely from wild birds.
Earlier this month, agriculture officials in Nevada and Arizona announced they had each found a version of the virus that was distinct from the version that had been circulating in dairy cattle. The virus isolated from the milk of the Nevada herd was a D1.1 genotype — a close relative of the version responsible for a severe infection of a teenager in British Columbia, Canada, in November, and the person who died in Louisiana in January. The virus isolated from the herd in Arizona was also a D1.1 virus, but a different version. Both D1.1 versions have been circulating in wild birds.
“This is not a one-and-done kind of situation where if we just clean up H5N1 on the farms that have had it already, we’re done with it,” said Osterholm. “As long as there’s migratory waterfowl that are infected, you’re going to see this problem with production animals, whether it’s dairy cattle or whether it’s poultry.”
As of Tuesday, more than 166 million chicken, duck, turkey, and other domestic birds have died or been euthanized since the start of the H5N1 outbreak in February 2022, according to data from the USDA. While the virus is much less deadly in dairy cattle — most animals recover and don’t have to be culled — farmers still suffer an economic hit from the cost of caring for sick cows and lost milk. The cows can also spread the virus to their neighbors. In some cases, as has happened in Michigan, Colorado, and California, H5N1 was introduced to poultry operations from nearby dairy farms.
“We cannot effectively control H5N1 if the virus remains circulating in dairy,” said Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. “We learned that throughout 2024.”
Mike Payne, a food animal veterinary and biosecurity expert with the University of California, Davis’ Western Institute for Food Safety and Security, told STAT that the new USDA investment is a welcome signal that the agency recognizes H5N1 as the most significant animal health crisis in America in the last 100 years. In addition to addressing challenges in biosecurity and providing indemnity assistance, he hopes that some of the $1 billion will also go to expanding research into how the virus moves between farms. But he’s not optimistic that the new administration’s approach will eliminate the virus from the farm animals in the U.S. anytime soon.
“We have been trying to control avian influenza for decades through test and slaughter and have made no discernable progress in eradicating the disease,” Payne said in an email. “We have not eradicated other versions of the influenza virus family in swine, horses, dogs, cats or humans. Avian influenza, and specifically the current H5N1 strain, has become endemic, full stop. We will not control the outbreak in poultry until we control it in cattle. This will require cattle vaccination.”
In September, the USDA approved the first field trials to test an H5N1 vaccine for dairy cows. Last week, the USDA’s National Centers for Animal Health in Ames, Iowa, where the vaccine research is taking place, was hit with dozens of layoffs as part of a purge of workers across the federal government.
The USDA confirmed Tuesday evening to STAT that both the National Milk Testing program and the cow vaccine trial will continue.