The UK government said on Tuesday that cases of bird flu had been confirmed in commercial poultry at premises in Yorkshire, hours after it increased the risk level of the disease from medium to high.
H5N1 influenza has now been detected in pigs. This was something virologists had been worrying about ever since this highly pathogenic strain of bird flu started its rapid global spread in 2020. But why were we worrying specifically about pigs? And does this case – detected on a farm in Oregon on October 29 – change anything?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will soon begin testing bulk raw milk across the country for bird flu, a significant expansion of the agency's efforts to stifle the rapid spread of the virus, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Reuters.
Bird flu has been spreading fast among poultry in the European Union this season, raising concerns of a repeat of previous crises that led to the deaths of tens of millions of poultry in the bloc and fears that it could spread to humans.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday confirmed two of the four presumptive positive bird flu cases among poultry farm workers in Washington state.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture weakened an emergency order last spring designed to prevent the spread of bird flu among the nation's dairy cattle after pushback from state and industry officials, according to state and federal records seen by Reuters.
British Columbia has three new cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) among commercial poultry flocks in the Abbotsford and Chilliwack areas.
Bird flu is presumed to have infected four poultry workers in Washington state, making it the sixth U.S. state to identify human cases this year, according to the Washington State Department of Health.
Cows in California are dying at much higher rates from bird flu than in other affected states, industry and veterinary experts said, and some carcasses have been left rotting in the sun as rendering plants struggle to process all the dead animals.