Their investigative report—based on interviews with multiple health department employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation—revealed that employees were told of the startling policy change in meetings in October and November and that the policy would be implemented quietly and not put into writing.
Ars Technica has contacted the health department for comment and will update this post with any new information.
Health officials reported the first "severe" human case of the H5N1 virus on December 18.
MATTHEW HATCHER/AFP via Getty Images
A bird flu outbreak has ravaged the world's birds since 2020 and infected cattle earlier this year.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency over the virus this week.
Health officials also confirmed the first "severe" case of and hospitalization for the H5N1 virus.
The burgeoning global bird flu outbreak continued its flight path across the country this week, with two major developments that point to the virus's increasingly concerning spread.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency over the virus on Wednesday, citing a worrying number of infected herds throughout the state in recent months and a need for more resources.
Since the state first identified the H5N1 avian influenza virus in cattle in late August, California's agriculture department has confirmed 645 infected dairy herds.
Newsom's announcement, meanwhile, came just hours after health officials confirmed the first severe case of bird flu in Louisiana, saying a person was hospitalized with an infection after being exposed to sick birds in his backyard.
In recent months, infectious disease experts have grown more and more nervous about the possibility of a human pandemic linked to the virus, even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has maintained that the public health risk for humans is low.
Here's where things stand.
Bird flu outbreak
The H5N1 virus first reemerged in Europe in 2020 and has since become widespread in birds around the world. The outbreak has killed tens of millions of birds and tens of thousands of sea lions and seals in recent years.
Birds carry the disease while migrating and can expose domestic poultry to the virus while never showing signs themselves, according to the CDC.
The virus jumped to cattle herds for the first time ever earlier this year in a major escalation. Then, in October, a pig in Oregon tested positive for the virus, an especially concerning case as swine can host both bird and human flu viruses.
There has been no known human-to-human transmission yet. Still, the growing pattern of mammal-to-mammal transmission has infectious disease experts on guard against the possibility that H5N1 could eventually become a human pandemic.
"If it keeps spreading in animals, then it is eventually going to cause problems for humans, either because we don't have food because they've got to start exterminating flocks, or because it starts to make a jump in humans," Dr. Jerome Adams, a former surgeon general and the director of health equity at Purdue University, told Business Insider in April.
"The more it replicates, the more chances it has to mutate," he added.
The ongoing multi-state dairy cattle outbreak, which is believed to have started in Texas, has infected 865 herds across 16 states, according to the CDC, and has led to a growing number of human cases among US dairy and poultry workers.
The CDC has thus far confirmed 61 reported human cases and seven probable cases across the US, though some scientists estimate that the real number of infections is higher.
More than half of the human cases are tied to interaction with sick cattle. The remaining infections have been traced to exposure to sick poultry or have an unknown origin, the CDC said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture this month issued a federal order that requires the testing of the nation's milk supply.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
State of emergency
California's Wednesday announcement will give state and local authorities increased resources to study and contain the outbreak, Newsom said.
"This proclamation is a targeted action to ensure government agencies have the resources and flexibility they need to respond quickly to this outbreak," the governor said in a statement.
Earlier this month, the Agriculture Department said it would start testing the nation's milk supply for traces of the virus, requiring dairy farmers to provide raw milk samples upon request. Up until then, cattle testing for potential infections had been almost entirely voluntary.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine and associate chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said the declaration will likely give California a greater ability to surveil dairy farms for signs of the virus.
But declaring a state of emergency could be a double-edged sword.
Phrases "like 'state of emergency,' given that we've just been through a pandemic, can induce panic," Gandhi said.
And it's not time to panic yet, she said.
Gandhi praised the CDC's "very measured" messaging around the virus thus far and said health officials are closely monitoring the spread.
The Louisiana resident infected with H5N1 bird flu is hospitalized in critical condition and suffering from severe respiratory symptoms, the Louisiana health department revealed Wednesday.
The health department had reported the presumptive positive case on Friday and noted the person was hospitalized, as Ars reported. But a spokesperson had, at the time, declined to provide Ars with the patient's condition or further details, citing patient confidentiality and an ongoing public health investigation.
This morning, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it had confirmed the state's H5N1 testing and determined that the case "marks the first instance of severe illness linked to the virus in the United States."
Since H5N1 avian influenza made the unexpected jump from birds to cattle, experts are increasingly worried about human spread.
Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California declared a "proactive" state of emergency over the H5N1 bird flu.
The virus has spread rapidly through US dairy cattle herds, with 16 states affected.
The CDC reports low public risk with no human-to-human spread, but 61 human cases have been detected.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California declared a state of emergency over the H5N1 avian influenza virus on Wednesday.
The bird flu has been spreading rapidly through US dairy cattle herds since March, with infections confirmed in 16 states. Its jump from birds to cows surprised many virologists and raised concerns about the possibility that it could mutate enough to sustain human-to-human transmission.
For now, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not detected humans spreading the virus to each other and says the risk to the public remains low.
Still, 61 human cases have been confirmed across the country, with 34 of them in California. Many of these cases have been linked to infected cows or birds.
Newsom's declaration, which his office called a "proactive action," followed the detection of new cattle infections on dairy farms in Southern California, according to the office's statement.
"This proclamation is a targeted action to ensure government agencies have the resources and flexibility they need to respond quickly to this outbreak," Newsom said in a statement.
The FDA has said that grocery-shelf beef and dairy continue to be safe to consume. However, the FDA and unaffiliated virus experts have advised against drinking raw milk, which is not pasteurized and can contain harmful microorganisms.
"While the risk to the public remains low, we will continue to take all necessary steps to prevent the spread of this virus," Newsom said.
Also on Wednesday, the CDC confirmed the first case of severe symptoms in a human H5N1 infection, in Louisiana.
Slowing bird flu's spread
The H5N1 virus was first detected in a California cow on August 30. Since then, the governor's office reported, the state has distributed millions of pieces of protective equipment to dairy-farm workers and run a public education campaign.
Infectious-disease experts have previously told BI that limiting the virus's spread through cows can help reduce the odds of sustained human transmission.
That's because the more the virus replicates itself, the more opportunities it has to mutate, and the more new mutations can take hold and spread to new animals. As H5N1 spreads in cattle, a mammal population that lives close to humans, it gets more chances to adapt to humans.
"There's such a vast amount of virus at the moment. And clearly it is changing, and it's doing new and unexpected things," Christopher Dye, an epidemiologist and senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, told BI in June.
In a paper in the medical journal BMJ, Dye and his colleague Wendy Barclay argued that the risk of a major human outbreak was "large, plausible, and imminent" — but not inevitable.
When that paper was published in early June, there had only been three confirmed human cases in the US.
"Influenza has always been a concern for decades and decades, and this particular form of influenza for at least two decades," Dye said. Bird flu, he added, has "risen to a level of concern, I think, which is greater than ever before."
A person in Louisiana is hospitalized with H5N1 bird flu after having contact with sick and dying birds suspected of carrying the virus, state health officials announced Friday.
It is the first human H5N1 case detected in Louisiana. For now, the case is considered a "presumptive" positive until testing is confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health officials say that the risk to the public is low but caution people to stay away from any sick or dead birds. A spokesperson for Louisiana's health department told Ars that the hospitalized patient had contact with both backyard and wild birds.
Although the person has been hospitalized, their condition was not reported. The spokesperson said the department would not comment on the patient's condition due to patient confidentiality and an ongoing public health investigation.
A handful of dairy farms sprawl across the valley floor, ringed by the spikey, copper-colored San Jacinto mountains. This is the very edge of California’s dairy country—and so far, the cows here are safe.
But everyone worries that the potentially lethal bird flu is on the way. “I hope not,” says Clemente Jimenez, as he fixes a hose at Pastime Lakes, a 1,500-head dairy farm. “It’s a lot of trouble.”
Further north and west, in the San Joaquin Valley—the heart of the state’s dairy industry—the H5N1 virus, commonly known as bird flu, has rippled through the massive herds that provide most of the country’s milk. Farmworkers have piled carcasses into black and white heaps. This week the state reported 19 new confirmed cases in cows and more than 240,000 in chickens. Another 50,000 cases were confirmed at a chicken breeding facility in Oklahoma.
On Friday, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it would begin a nationwide testing program for the presence of the H5N1 flu virus, also known as the bird flu. Testing will focus on pre-pasteurized milk at dairy processing facilities (pasteurization inactivates the virus), but the order that's launching the program will require anybody involved with milk production before then to provide samples to the USDA on request. That includes "any entity responsible for a dairy farm, bulk milk transporter, bulk milk transfer station, or dairy processing facility."
The ultimate goal is to identify individual herds where the virus is circulating and use the agency's existing powers to do contact tracing and restrict the movement of cattle, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the virus from US herds.
A bovine disease vector
At the time of publication, the CDC had identified 58 cases of humans infected by the H5N1 flu virus, over half of them in California. All but two have come about due to contact with agriculture, either cattle (35 cases) or poultry (21). The virus's genetic material has appeared in the milk supply and, although pasteurization should eliminate any intact infectious virus, raw milk is notable for not undergoing pasteurization, which has led to at least one recall when the virus made its way into raw milk. And we know the virus can spread to other species if they drink milk from infected cows.
Mark McAfee is the founder of Raw Farms, the biggest producer of raw milk in the US. They're based in Fresno, California.
Courtesy of Mark McAfee
California's biggest raw milk brand tested positive for bird flu.
With a voluntary recall underway, the company has started sending out milk to be pasteurized.
Raw cheese, kefir, and butter are still being sold.
One of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s favorite raw milk producers is temporarily going pasteurized, as bird flu sweeps across California's dairyland.
Raw Farms isCalifornia's largest producer of raw milk products, and a huge name in West Coast wellness circles. This summer, the company partnered with carnivore diet influencer Paul Saladino and trendy LA grocery store Erewhon to produce a $19 raw kefir smoothie.
Now, the company is recallingall of its raw milk and raw cream on store shelves statewide, after initial retail tests of at least two batches of milk turned up positive for H5N1 bird flu.
In the meantime, raw milk produced at the Fresno-based dairy is being processed like regular milk.
"It's going from our dairies directly to a processing plant owned by somebody else to be pasteurized," Raw Farms founder Mark McAfee told Business Insider on Wednesday, adding that the move is a "horrible" one for his bottom line.
"We're getting about 20%" of normal sales revenue, he said.
Raw Farms isn't recalling its raw cheeses, butter, or kefir, and McAfee said that's because those products have been fermented, heated, cultured, or aged, and therefore are somewhat less of a concern to regulators.
Dr. Paul Saladino's $19 Raw Animal-Based Smoothie includes Raw Farm's kefir milk, plus beef organ powder, blueberries, honey, bananas, and other ingredients.
Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Can you get bird flu from raw milk?
It's normal for raw milk to have viruses or bacteria floating around in it. Unlike pasteurized milk, raw milk is not heated to kill pathogens.
That's why the US Food and Drug Administration advises against anyone drinking raw milk. There'sa risk of contracting stomach bugs like Salmonella or E. coli, which can cause food poisoning, and in rare cases hospitalization or death. Kids are especially at risk.
It's not clear whether people can actually get bird flu by drinking milk from a sick cow. So far, there have been no reports of raw milk drinkers catching bird flu, but there have been several cases of cats drinking raw milk from cows sick with bird flu, and then dropping dead afterwards.
"Like many foodborne illnesses, illnesses from raw milk are often underreported because many people aren't tested by a doctor in time to identify a pathogen and link the illness to a specific food," the Santa Clara County Public Health Department, the agency that first identified bird flu virus in Raw Farms products in November, told BI in a statement.
The FDA declined to comment for this story, citing an ongoing lawsuit against Raw Farms, which accuses the company of selling raw milk across state lines (that's forbidden under federal law).
A spokesperson for the agency pointed BI to a recent letter to dairy producers nationwide, which mentions that bird flu is a virus, like other viruses, that can't withstand pasteurization.
A bird flu outbreak will not stop the raw milk trend, McAfee says
McAfee is trying to set up some raw milk bottling and processing in another area of the state that isn't as affected by the current H5N1 outbreak as the Central Valley. He said he hopes to start selling raw milk again soon, after performing (and clearing) some additional tests.
"Hopefully, within the next 10 days, we'll have a dairy that's up and going, and products will be flowing from a different area of California," he said.
Raw Farms cows recently tested positive for H5N1 bird flu. The virus has been sweeping through California's Central Valley herds, among others nationwide.
Raw Farms
That would be welcome news to President-elect Trump's pick to head up Health and Human Services next year.
"People don't really appreciate the deep science of this," he said. "I do."
He pointed to the latest science that suggests the biggest hazard for bird flu transmission lies not in the milk itself, but in dairy cow udders.
CDC
So far, of the 32 human bird flu cases reported in California, 31 have been traced back to cattle exposure.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been warning dairy workers to watch out for raw milk splashing into their eyeballs, and McAfee said his dairy workers wear eye protection.
Bird flu has landed on a California farm that shuns virus-killing pasteurization, leading to a second recall of raw milk and a suspension of operations at the company, Raw Farm in Fresno County.
According to a November 27 alert by the California health department, officials in Santa Clara County found evidence of bird flu virus in retail samples of a batch of Raw Farm's milk, which has been recalled. It is the second time that retail testing has turned up positive results for the company and spurred a recall. The first contaminated batch was reported on November 24. The two recalled batches are those with lot codes 20241109 ("Best By" date of November 27, 2024) and 20241119 (Best By date of December 7, 2024).
In an email to Ars on Monday, Raw Farm CEO Mark McAfee said that none of the company's cows are visibly sick but that it appears that asymptomatic cows are shedding the avian influenza virus.
Two batches of raw milk from a trendy California brand have tested positive for bird flu this week.
Bird flu has been spreading rapidly among cattle in the US.
Experts say drinking raw milk is dangerous, and can cause food poisoning.
Another batch of raw milk just tested positive for bird flu in California.
Last Sunday, Fresno-based Raw Farm voluntarily recalled a first batch of cream top whole raw milk with a "best by" date of November 27. By Wednesday, the California Department of Public Health announced that a second batch of Raw Farm cream top, with a "best by" date of December 7 had also tested positive for bird flu, based on retail sampling.
"We're not making a big deal about it, because it's not a big deal," Kaleigh Stanziani, Raw Farm's vice president of marketing, said in a short video posted on YouTube after the farm's first voluntary recall was announced earlier this week.
She said there had only been an indication that there might be a "trace element of something possible," emphasizing that there had been no reported illnesses of Raw Farms cows or positive tests from the cattle.
Raw Farm owner Mark McAfee later told the LA Times that the California Department of Food and Agriculture had requested that his company "hold delivery of further products" until Friday, after conducting thorough testing of two Raw Farms and one creamery on Wednesday. (McAfee could not immediately be reached for comment by Business Insider during the Thanksgiving holiday.)
Raw milk may be helping bird flu spread — but not in the way you might think
Containers of Raw Farm raw milk on a shelf at Berkeley Bowl on November 25, 2024 in Berkeley, California.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Scientists suspect that cross-contamination of raw milk between animals may be one reason the H5N1 virus is spreading rapidly among cows in the US — and could even contribute to the human spread of the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautions that dairy workers might be able to contract bird flu by infected raw milk splashed into their eyes.
There is no definitive evidence yet that humans can get bird flu from drinking contaminated raw milk. Instead, health authorities generally recommend avoiding raw milk because of other serious health risks, including food poisoning with bacteria like Salmonella, E.coli, or Listeria.
There are no known health benefits of drinking raw milk. Instead, all evidence suggests that pasteurized milk is just as nutritious, and is safer to consume.
Still, raw milk has become a trendy product among some influencers. Gwenyth Paltrow says she has it in her coffee in the morning.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Trump's pick for Health and Human Services secretary, says he wants the US Food and Drug Administration to stop its "war" against raw milk.
Over the summer, "Carnivore MD" Paul Saladino released a raw milk smoothie in partnership with the elite Los Angeles health foods store Erewhon featuring unpasteurized (raw) kefir from Raw Farms, and powdered beef organs.
California has some of the loosest rules around raw milk in the country; it's generally fine for California retailers like health foods stores and grocers to sell it, raw milk products just can't be transported across state lines, per FDA rules.
Dr. Paul's Raw Animal-Based Smoothie includes Raw Farm kefir milk, beef organ powder, as well as blueberries, honey, bananas and other ingredients. It's $19.
Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Michael Payne, a researcher at the Western Institute of Food Safety and Security, told The Guardian that people consuming Dr. Paul's $19 smoothie were "playing Russian roulette with their health," and ignoring pasteurization, "the single most important food safety firewall in history."
California dairy farms have been seeing an uptick in bird flu cases since August. The state has reported 29 confirmed human cases of bird flu, and all but one of those was sourced back to cows.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the first confirmed case of bird flu in a California child from Alameda County. The child had no known contact with infected farm animals, but may have been exposed to wild birds, the California health department said in a statement.
The child had mild symptoms and is recovering well after receiving antiviral drugs.
Bird flu virus has been found in a batch of raw—unpasteurized—milk sold in California, prompting a recall issued at the state's request, health officials announced over the weekend.
No illnesses have yet been linked to the contaminated milk, made by Raw Farm, LLC of Fresno County. The contamination was found in testing by health officials in nearby Santa Clara County, who detected the virus in milk from a retail store. The state laboratory has confirmed the finding.
In a YouTube message from Raw Farm, a company representative called the contamination "not a big deal" and emphasized that the recall is only being done out of an abundance of caution.
