Penn State Tests Dairy Herd for Bird Flu in Support of State Surveillance Effort

By Chuck Gill

Animal health experts in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences have announced that — out of an abundance of caution — they will test the University’s dairy herd for highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, under a voluntary state testing program.

The announcement comes amidst an outbreak of bird flu that has affected dairy cattle in more than a dozen states since March. As of July 19, the virus had not been found in Pennsylvania dairy herds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and state animal health authorities.

The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has encouraged all dairy farms in the state to enroll in its Lactating Dairy Cow Health Monitoring Program. The voluntary program is aimed at providing critical data on the status of dairy herds in Pennsylvania and detecting HPAI as quickly as possible should it arrive in the commonwealth.

“The state herd monitoring program calls for conducting a weekly test of milk from a farm for three weeks,” said extension veterinarian Ernest Hovingh, who is also a clinical professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences and director of Penn State’s Animal Diagnostic Laboratory. “If all tests are negative and no clinical signs of the disease are observed, the herd is considered ‘unaffected.’ At that point, weekly testing would continue, to ensure that the herd remains free of the virus.”