Oregon’s Dairy Cows Are Free of Avian Flu. The State is Trying to Keep It That Way

By Geoff Norcross

Of the more than four dozen known cases of H5N1 virus infection in Oregon right now, most are birds. Some are cats. One is a human.

None are dairy cattle, at least not yet.

“I am ecstatic to be able to say that we do not have this virus in Oregon dairy cattle,” says state veterinarian Dr. Ryan Scholz. “We do weekly surveillance on all of our dairies.”

Scholz spoke with “All Things Considered” host Geoff Norcross about the steps to keep avian flu out of dairy operations, and about the state of the virus in Oregon at the moment.

This following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Geoff Norcross: Basically speaking, how does this virus spread?

Ryan Scholz: Wild waterfowl are really the critical piece in pretty much all of the different ways it spreads. Wild ducks and geese can carry this virus, and then the cases we see in domestic livestock, whether it’s poultry or other species, generally trace back to some sort of exposure with those waterfowl. When you start getting into larger operations, it’s often human-assisted. Someone didn’t clean their shoes off after they went walking at the park and walked through some duck droppings and brought that back.

But there are a number of compensation packages that are available through USDA for some of the costs. Purchasing enhanced personal protective equipment to protect their employees, there’s reimbursement for that. There’s reimbursement for that enhanced biosecurity they have to do to make sure that that virus doesn’t leave their farm on their vehicles, on people, anything like that.

Norcross: You mentioned earlier that, at the moment, you do not see any instances of this virus infecting dairy cattle. But are there incentives in place for farmers to actually tell you when they see symptoms of the virus in their herds?

Scholz: That’s part of it. This truly is economically devastating to a dairy. The reduction in production at the same time where you have all of these new costs, that is really hard to bear. But Oregon’s kind of unique. We do weekly surveillance on all of our dairies. There’s a sample that’s collected at each dairy in the state, and tested every week. We’ve been doing that for several months. We know the disease status of those dairies. That weekly testing has been shown in other states where they’ve had outbreaks to give us a little over two weeks’ head start before you start seeing clinical signs and sick cows.