FARM FEARS — The recent avian flu outbreak, which has spread from animals to at least one human, has made both federal and state officials concerned about the prospect of a pandemic. But the two groups can’t agree on how to treat the problem. Though the current strain of the bird flu currently poses a low risk to humans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants to study the outbreak. Many farmers, however, don’t want the federal government on their property. And some state officials are pushing back — the Texas Department of State Health Services, where the bird flu was first detected, says they haven’t invited the CDC down because they haven’t found a dairy farmer who wants these officials on their land. The debate is grounded in traditional friction over questions of federal overreach, but there’s also a distinct political component as red state officials lead the resistance to CDC involvement. To understand more about the situation on the ground with the bird flu and the political implications of the CDC’s attempts to respond, Nightly spoke with Meredith Lee Hill , a food and agriculture policy reporter for POLITICO who — along with colleagues David Lim and Marcia Brown — explored the contours of some of these debates in a piece earlier today. This conversation has been edited. How serious is this outbreak of the bird flu? The current outbreak currently poses a low risk to humans. But this is the kind of virus that health officials worry could spiral into a pandemic similar to Covid-19 if it ends up being more transmissible to humans and the federal government doesn’t quickly get their hands around the situation. One of the biggest concerns is how much the federal government doesn’t know about the virus that’s spreading through U.S. dairy herds, with one confirmed human case in a Texas dairy worker. It’s a new situation that federal officials are still trying to figure out, and they’re struggling to gather key information about the virus and whether it’s likely to spread to more humans. One major concern raised by Louisiana’s agriculture commissioner Mike Strain, who is also a veterinarian, is that recent studies show the virus has been present in U.S. dairy herds for more than four months. Strain told me the high level of virus presence in dairy herds and the length of time it’s been spreading makes him worry that the current strain could mutate and “become more likely to move between humans, not just from an animal, from a cow or poultry to humans, but within the human population.” Why don’t we know for sure how many people have contracted it? Huge challenges remain for the federal government and states to track dairy farmworkers and others who’ve had contact with infected cattle. But at this point, the U.S. just isn’t testing enough people to really get a full picture of the current outbreak. We do know that at least 30 people have been tested since the bird flu virus was first detected in dairy cows in Texas in March and at least 220 people “have been monitored for [the virus] after relevant exposures,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There’s also some frustration among scientists that federal officials have declined to answer questions about where in the country the monitored workers are, saying only that officials are “following the herd” of infected cows. Can you explain the tension between the states and the CDC over how to respond? Why wouldn’t they work closely together to respond to the outbreak? The CDC is locked in a power struggle with key states and agriculture players as it tries to better track the virus and prevent another potential pandemic, as we reported this morning . Dairy farmers are extremely wary of their farms being identified as infected. A significant number of farmworkers are also undocumented migrants who are harder for public health officials to reach. Health officials are flying a bit blind as they try to track and trace all the possible exposures. As POLITICO first reported , CDC officials have raised the prospect of sending federal teams to farms to monitor the health of farmworkers and collect other data, including with a survey. But on recent conference calls with all 50 state agriculture chiefs and veterinarians, blue and red state officials strongly pushed back on the CDC suggestion, citing concerns about biosecurity on farms and reluctance among farmers to allow federal officials onto their property. State agriculture chiefs told us they want to keep state and local public health officials as the main contact to farmers, and then send information to the CDC. The agency is now trying to find a middle ground. Aside from the federal-state conflicts here, is there a political dimension to this? We’ve heard from some state officials who are concerned that the Agriculture Department is not getting enough say in the process of tracking the outbreaks on farms, as the CDC and White House increase their oversight of the federal response. So there are intra-government tensions playing out as well. But in red states in particular, there is generally a deep mistrust of federal health officials among elected officials and farmers — including in Texas, which is the epicenter of the current outbreak. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller called the CDC proposal “overreach” and said it should “back off.” The former rodeo cowboy is a possible pick to lead the USDA if former President Donald Trump wins the presidential election. How scared should we be about the future of bird flu? Again, the risk to the general public is low. I think people are generally comforted by the fact that there has only been one confirmed human case so far, but given the lag in testing, health experts say it’s possible that number is higher. It’s important for people to understand what the federal government knows so far about the virus, and what it doesn’t, which is still a significant amount. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh .
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