Biosecurity is Key to Managing Bird Flu in Dairy Cattle

H5NI, or bird flu continues to persist as an issue within the dairy industry, and is an issue that both the USDA and the National Milk Producers Federation are working to reduce and manage. National Milk's Senior Vice President of Member Services and Strategic Initiatives, Chris Galen.

“ USDA has provided a number of incentives for farmers to step up testing. Certainly we recommend that anybody that has some reduction in milk production or anything that's going wrong with their cattle when their clinical symptoms ought to get tested for this, because we know what's out there. And the good news is that most cattle you know do recover, and they recover their milk production, and they recover their health. I think the concern is that if this virus continues to fester at a low level here this summer, that you know, it could spread again here in the fall, when we get to cooler weather.

H5N1 may not be entirely eradicated, but with proper measures, he says it can be managed.”

“It's just something that we're going to have to probably deal with in the same way that we still have to deal with covid now four and a half years later, because it's not going away. And so this may be another example where it's going to be difficult to get rid entirely of h5, n1, but certainly we're doing a lot better now with biosecurity.”

And, Galen says with conscientious efforts by both veterinarians and farmers, they hope to keep the H5N1 at most, a minor annoyance in.