The USDA is expanding efforts to track bird flu in dairy cattle by testing milk.
The virus has already been confirmed in several South Dakota dairy herds.
The National Milk Testing Strategy requires raw unpasteurized milk samples to be collected nationwide and shared with the USDA for testing. The move aims to prevent the spread of H5N1, commonly called bird flu.
Beth Thompson is the state veterinarian. She said federal testing mandates for dairy cattle began earlier this year.
“Beginning in April, I believe, we had the first federal order from the USDA veterinary services, which mandated testing of lactating cows if they were crossing state lines. What we have seen since then, the numbers I pulled this morning, we’ve got 742 herds in 16 states that have been affected. Here in South Dakota, early on we had seven cases of dairy herds being affected with avian influenza,” said Thompson.
Thompson said this second federal mandate requires the sampling of milk at the silo level. She said this helps take a more accurate snapshot of how the virus is spreading.
She said of the 58 recent human cases of avian influenza, 35 of them have been directly traced back to dairy exposure.
Thompson said the new mandate will not directly affect state dairy operations.
“The plant samplers who are already sampling for other purposes are going to collect those silo samples and then ship it off to our national lab. The national lab, if there are any positives, will report it back to the state animal health official. That’s where our office gets involved, and then we will follow up individually on those detections. And, very importantly all of this is confidential information. There is no information that is going to go out to the public on individual diary samples or individual silo samples,” said Thompson.
She said the state has a strong private veterinary footprint. She encourages farmers and ranchers to work closely with their local veterinarian by reporting anything wrong they find within their herds.
