Five people infected as bird flu appears to go from cows to chickens to humans
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
It's kind of disturbing that information about where our food comes from is being kept hidden from us. The same thing happens whenever there are major food recalls. The names of the companies where the contaminated food came from are rarely revealed to the public.
In this instance, a few articles say the name of the facility is being kept secret due to something called the "Livestock Information Protection Act". Googling "Livestock Information Protection Act" only returns articles about this incident. Assuming that the Livestock Information Protection Act is a real thing that actually exists, I'd be interested in learning why it exists.
It doesn't look like there's been any real discussion about that act online either.
No law demanded this, it was just a business on one side of the industry looking out for the interests of one on another, to all of our detriment.
> You're right, Ailsa, it would really help to know if and how much virus is out there in the raw milk supply being sold now to people. But testing doesn't seem to be happening regularly, and that data is really hard to come by. That's why we tried to find our own. But when I brought raw milk that I bought from those four Texas farms to one of the few labs authorized by the USDA to test milk for bird flu, the lab insisted on calling each of the four farms first for permission, though the USDA has confirmed the agency doesn't require permission from farms to perform the test.
> None of the farms gave the lab permission to run the tests. They told the lab they were aware of what a non-negative result would do for their business. So the lab refused to test our samples. That means we weren't able to find out how much virus was in the raw milk being sold now in Texas, and probably it's very difficult for other members of the public to do that, too.
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/15/1251647612/a-bird-flu-outbrea...
at the time, the CDC only allowed testing for known exposures and travel to China. their lab wasn't authorized to test for covid. but they broke the rules and did so anyway, and when they saw positive cases they raised the alarm.
the CDC had the actual gall to threaten them, but the cat was out of the bag. the country couldn't bury its head in the sand anymore.
hopefully some USDA-unauthorized labs will test for bird flu, even if the official labs are too chicken.
No other 'suitable' corporation is listed under any other place in Weld County.
While Wikipedia is possibly very incomplete, this still gives high confidence because of the sheer size, which lists JBS Greely as largest employer with 5,141 employees as of May 1, 2023.
That sounds like a lot of chicken, densely packed. And thus higher probability of such things happening.
Of course it could be some other, smaller farm, but how likely is that?
edit: changed into permanent links, just to be safe from edit wars, white-washing, whatever.
It took some searching, including through their financial statements over the years, but I managed to get pretty long list of brands they supply and/or distribute for. I've got a list of brands to avoid, but I still can't be confident that other brands seen in stores are totally unaffiliated. As consumers we can only do our best though. If you can find a local farm with chickens, that's probably your best bet.
I know H5N1 had a high fatality rate before the current streak of diagnoses. If I'm reading (1) correctly, the death rate since 2022, for all known cases worldwide, is ~27%. Still bad, but a massive reduction from the 50%+ it had before. Current cases in the US are mild, according to (1).
I have little faith in pandemic response after COVID, but there are a few things to keep in mind:
1) We managed to shove a decade of viral research into 18 months due to COVID-19. We now have mRNA vaccines, which can be made far faster than other types and can be switched more easily in production. People (well, more people than before) are willing to mask if they're sick, at least in my anecdotal experience.
2) Flu has been the one that public health officials, doctors, virologists, etc. have been watching for years. If you had asked someone in those fields what their thoughts on COVID-19 were in 2015, they would have asked "what the hell's covid?", but would have been able to give you a fairly complete picture of what was happening with the different varieties of influenza. The enemy is known, to the point where rural villages in Southeast Asia can have people quarantined for the virus.
3) Again, recent cases in the Western world have been mild.
Disclaimer: I am not an MD, DO, MPH, PhD, or anything else of that nature. I have never claimed to be smart. I am a dude on the internet. Listen to smart people before you listen to me and my one source.
This is just one reason (though I think slightly different from what you're saying) why I don't eat meat anymore (the main one being my gallbladder was giving me pain when I'd eat meat/dairy - the doc wanted to take it out, but I found that going vegan solved that problem): Factory farms are very conducive to disease spread given the tight quarters the animals are raised in and can be viral evolution factories. But unless you're eating raw meat and drinking raw milk there's no worry about getting h5n1 from meat/dairy.
Very interesting!
Out of "scientific" interest, did you manage to fully recover your gallbladder functionality through your diet change? And secondarily, although you chose to go vegan, did you ever occasionally try back quality dairy or meat, without pain?
Thank you for your reply!
Plus we now have concrete data that the most affected by far are disabled, poor, elderly, and minorities. Groups we broadly consider acceptable to harm for the benefit of everyone else, as a matter of national policy.
"Given the presence of bird flu on the premises, all 1.8 million birds need to be culled, aka "depopulated." "
Can you picture 1.8 million birds? Now picture them all being gassed. Now, I'm not vegan but that's grim.
"Workers are tasked with placing the birds in the chambers, which only hold a few dozen birds at a time. In all, the method requires workers to have a high degree of contact with the infected birds, going from bird to bird and batch to batch with the carts."
What a great idea.
(Presumably because we've been having low/no symptom cases that went undetected for a while.)
Humans express the alpha-2,3 sialic acid receptor on cells that line the surface of the eye (which explains why the dairy farm worker in Texas had severe conjunctivitis). The alpha-2,3 sialic acid receptor is also found on cells that line the lung. However, and most importantly, the alpha-2,3 sialic acid receptor is NOT found in cells that line the upper respiratory tract. This means that H5 viruses cannot reproduce themselves in the upper respiratory tract and thus be easily transmitted from one person to another. It also means that H5 viruses cannot amplify themselves in the upper respiratory tract, where hundreds of virus particles can become millions of virus particles.
https://pauloffit.substack.com/p/h5n1-influenza-virus-bird-f...
https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/statistic/broiler-ind...
It’s grim, but its not that much of an outlier.