US expands bird flu testing to all farm workers exposed to infected animals
Concerns over the spread of bird flu are prompting the United States government to make changes. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Thursday, Nov. 7, that all farm workers exposed to animals with bird flu should be tested for the virus even if they have not experienced symptoms.
The CDC’s new recommendation comes as the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is also expanding testing of milk for bird flu.
The department announced last week that it would begin testing bulk milk for bird flu. This comes after mounting pressure from industry and veterinary groups.
Meanwhile, workers are reportedly avoiding testing over economic concerns or because their symptoms are mild. Infectious disease experts note that as the virus spreads, the risk of it moving to human-to-human increases, which could spark a pandemic.
The CDC has reported 46 human cases of bird flu since April. However, scientists believe the numbers are higher due to underreporting.
Recent tests among 115 dairy workers in Michigan and Colorado who were exposed to infected cows found evidence of a prior infection in eight workers. Of those eight workers who showed antibodies to H5N1, only half said they recalled experiencing symptoms from the virus.
These findings show the federal response to the outbreak has been lackluster, according to researchers. They added the studies should’ve been done months ago and should’ve been prioritized.
The CDC’s expanded testing comes after two pigs on an Oregon farm tested positive for the virus a week apart. Virologists say the findings are concerning because pig infections have been a source of prior human pandemics.
H5N1 has now reportedly been confirmed in at least 46 cattle herds in 15 states across the U.S.
US pays $72 million to pharmaceutical companies for bird flu vaccine
As the number of human cases of H5N1, also known as bird flu, grow, the United States announced on Friday, Oct. 4, that it is providing vaccine manufacturers with $72 million to double their ready-to-use bird flu vaccine stockpile. Manufacturers currently have nearly five million ready-to-use doses and expect to have about 10 million by the beginning of 2025.
The funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) will allow four companies producing the inoculations to bring the vaccine out of a storage stockpile and put them in pre-filled syringes for quick distribution in case of a public health emergency.
Other companies like Pfizer and Moderna are continuing efforts to develop an mRNA bird flu vaccine similar to COVID-19 shots.
The announcement by the U.S. comes as two more farm workers in California tested positive for the virus on Thursday, Oct. 3. They continue to be monitored for symptoms. At the time this report was published, the workers had no respiratory symptoms and only exhibited conjunctivitis or pink eye.
The latest human infections bring the total number of cases in people to 16 in the United States. Currently, there are no recommendations for anyone in the country to get a bird flu shot and health officials maintain that the risk of the virus to humans remains “low.”
DHHS said that its spending on the vaccinations is out of “an abundance of caution” and “is essential in preparing for a public health emergency.”
Lawmakers call for investigation of Boar’s Head as 10 deaths recorded
After the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday, Sept. 25, reported the 10th death connected to a listeria outbreak linked to recalled Boar’s Head deli meat. Lawmakers are now demanding answers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
A group of House representatives and senators sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday, Sept. 26, calling on the USDA and DOJ to investigate the company and figure out whether or not criminal charges should be filed against Boar’s Head for the worst listeria outbreak in more than a decade.
“The time for action is long overdue, and we urge your agencies to work together to seek immediate justice for impacted customers and to prevent this from happening again,” the letter reads in part.
Boar’s Head said earlier this month that it would halt the sales of liverwurst after an investigation found that its production was the root cause of the listeria contamination, and the company announced it is closing its Virginia plant that produced the contaminated liverwurst.
The plant reportedly not been operational since July when the liverwurst recall took place and eventually expanded to all products made at the facility.
Lawmakers assert that the USDA failed to uphold its authority by allowing Boar’s Head to continue operating the Virginia facility in “horrific conditions,” and they demanded the agency expand inspections to other Boar’s Head plants and test for listeria at all the company’s facilities, adding that the company has a “pattern of noncompliance.”
USDA inspection reports from 2022 described violations at the Virginia plant range from mold, rusty equipment, pools of blood on the floor and “dripping condensation” posing an “imminent threat.” The agency maintains that it advised company management at the plant to take corrective actions to fix the dozens of issues it discovered.
So far, at least 59 people across 19 states have been sickened by the bacterial outbreak, and now 10 have died. However, experts note that the outbreak may be larger due to the fact that some people infected may not be reporting the sickness and recovering on their own.
Calif. avocado growers outraged as US transfers pest inspection duties to Mexico
The U.S. has decided to transfer pest inspection duties of Mexican avocados to Mexico, igniting concerns about food safety and international trade relations. The California Avocado Commission vehemently opposes the move, warning it could devastate the industry.
Currently, workers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) inspect Mexican avocados before they come to the U.S., ensuring they do not transfer pests that could threaten U.S. crops.
In a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, the California Avocado Commission writes, “This action reverses the long-established inspection process designed to prevent invasions of known pests in Mexico that would devastate our industry. This process was the foundation for the initial decision allowing the importation of avocados from Mexico into the United States.”
However, those USDA inspectors have faced escalating dangers in Mexico while doing their jobs. In 2022, inspections halted after a U.S. inspector received threats against himself and his family in Michoacán, where drug cartels routinely extort growers. In June, two USDA employees were assaulted and briefly held captive in Michoacán.
Mexico supplies about 80% of U.S. avocado imports, making the inspection change potentially impactful on the market, as U.S. growers cannot meet the country’s entire demand or provide fruit year-round, complicating the trade relationship.
Mexican authorities welcomed the news, saying they haven’t had any untreated pest problems in their 27-year-old track record.
Dairy herds infected with H5N1 double just days apart in California
California, the largest milk producer in the United States, saw cases of bird flu double in dairy herds just days apart. Officials reported on Thursday, Sept. 19, that the number of infected dairy herds stood at 17 and by Monday, Sept. 23, it doubled to 34 infected herds.
The findings are deeply troubling for a state with around 1,100 dairy herds as infected cows will now have to be quarantined and nearby dairy farms will have to undergo specialized testing.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture said that it expected more cases to be found in the coming days and weeks. However, both state and federal officials maintain that pasteurized milk is still safe to drink.
California is now second in the nation in dairy herd cases of H5N1 while Colorado is first with 64 infected herds to date. However, California did not report its first case of H5N1 in a herd until Aug. 30, far after the outbreak started in March. So far, 232 herds in 14 states have tested positive for bird flu.
Infectious disease experts note that H5N1 could be spreading undetected in the United States because of “months of missing data” and narrow testing requirements. Right now, there is only mandatory reporting for the disease in poultry and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) only requires testing of lactating cows before they move across state borders.
Scientists are urging greater control measures including vaccinations, which they say may be needed “at scale” if the virus starts spreading from human-to-human.
Currently, there have only been 14 confirmed cases in humans, and it’s not been known to spread from human-to-human. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) contends that the risk to humans remains low but said that it is closely monitoring people exposed to the virus.
Short corn offering high hopes for the future of farming in Midwest
“Knee high by the 4th of July” may not be the measure for a successful corn crop in the future. That’s because there are high hopes for short corn in the Midwest, and soon, towering corn stocks as far as the eye can see may be a relic of farms past. Short corn, created by Bayer Crop Science, is undergoing a pilot program on about 30,000 acres of in the Midwest, according to a report by The Associated Press on Monday, Sept. 23.
“As you drive across the Midwest in the next seven, eight, 10 years, you’re going to see a lot of this out there,” Cameron Sorgenfrey, an Iowa farmer, said when referring to the short corn crop.
Scientists said that the crop shows promise in withstanding powerful windstorms like a derecho that hit the area in 2020.
“It changed a lot of people’s lives,” Sorgenfrey said, referring to the derecho. “The next morning, when you woke up, or that afternoon, when you saw it and drove around, it was a real mess. A lot of stuff destroyed, and most of the corn was pretty flat.”
Sorgenfrey said a similar event this year in Nebraska did not impact the short corn crop nearly as much as the derecho did tall corn in 2020.
A Bayer spokesperson said the company has been working on the crop for more than two decades. While the ultimate goal is reportedly to create a climate change-resistant corn, researchers also said that it will make it easier for farmers to get into the fields with equipment to seed or spray fungicide.
However, some experts warned that short corn is also more susceptible to disease and mold because it is lower to the ground. It is also reportedly more prone to lodging, which is when corn grows along the ground due to heavy rain. Still, Bayer argued the positive outweighs the negative and expects to expand production in 2027 with the hopes of farmers growing it everywhere.
“I feel like in the last two years, it’s been a much better-looking corn out of the gate,” Sorgenfrey said. “It much more denser with extra population that it helps on that end and not only that, it grows the same until the row is closed. So, it helps with weed control, too, because you have more plants out there and less sunlight hitting the ground.”
The new crop could be a fundamental change to the industry that saw around 400 million tons of corn grown. Most of the crop was used for ethanol, animal feed or exported to other countries.
Just as inflation cools, bird flu is driving up the price of eggs
Consumer prices only rose 2.9% annually in July, giving Americans hope inflation has stabilized. But the cost of eggs is back on the rise, far more than the rest of the grocery bill.
The price of a dozen eggs spiked 19.1% in July compared to the same month last year. Meanwhile, groceries as a whole only went up 1.1% annually in July.
Outbreaks of avian influenza, or bird flu, are largely behind the price surge. The USDA said more than 18 million birds have been affected by the bird flu, which has caused millions of chickens to be culled to prevent further spread.
“The tough part is, there’s really no cure for bird flu, and even if there were, it would be so cost prohibitive,” agriculture expert and host of “The Business of Agriculture” podcast Damian Mason told Straight Arrow News. “So prevention is really what these farms have to do.”
The tough part is, there’s really no cure for bird flu, and even if there were, it would be so cost prohibitive.
Damian Mason, The Business of Agriculture
“If you get bird flu in that building, you have to kill [or] cull off the entire barn, and that way it keeps the spread from going to the next barn, [and] the next barn, [and] the next barn,” Mason said. “So that’s a really tough situation.”
The price of a dozen eggs is a full dollar more than it was last summer. That’s still nearly $2 below recent highs when prices rose by 70% annually in January 2023.
But bird flu isn’t the only thing making egg production more expensive. Labor and energy costs are also putting upward pressure on prices, Mason said.
“Those that want to show up and work at a chicken facility and go out and take care of hens and make sure the eggs are being gathered, washed, packaged into the crates; they’re still a little bit hard to come by,” he said. “[And] there’s a big cost on energy. You look at what your energy bill has done even in your home. Well imagine now you’re doing this across the whole entire supply chain. Eggs have to be refrigerated because they’re a perishable product, so there’s energy. They have to be transported in a pretty timely manner, so there’s a lot of energy that goes into the price of eggs.”
Egg demand is seen as “inelastic,” meaning people will generally still buy the same amount of the product despite price increases.
“When eggs double in price, you still want to feed your babies. You still want to make sure that your family has food, so they tend to be fairly inelastic,” Mason said.
Soybeans are having an incredible year. That’s bad for prices.
Everything seemingly went right for growing soybeans this year, which is why prices are going all wrong. Soybean futures are near 4-year lows and down about 45% from its 2022 peak. Corn is also in a similar boat.
The U.S. is in the midst of a farm slump right now, despite very high yields for the country’s two biggest crops.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected net farm income would drop 26% in 2024, affecting not only the farmer but also businesses that rely on the farmer’s income, like John Deere and Kinze. Deere expects its North American sales to continue to slump. This summer, the company has laid off hundreds of salaried employees.
We’re just really good at making bushels. The problem, of course, is we don’t need all these bushels.
Damian Mason, The Business of Agriculture
For a detailed look at what led to the low prices and how farmers may adjust, Straight Arrow News interviewed Damian Mason, host of “The Business of Agriculture” podcast.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Watch the full interview in the video above.
Simone Del Rosario: Damian, why do we have such high soybean yields this year?
Damian Mason: First off, farmers in America are very, very good at doing what they do, which is produce commodities. We’re remarkable at it. On a trend line — granted, there’s been some down years, we’re on a trend line — every year, our soybean production goes up about a bushel per acre, eight-tenths to one bushel per acre.
We’re going to put out about 53 bushels per acre. When I was in high school, we were at about half that. So 53 bushels per acre put on 86 million acres means a whole heck of a lot of soybeans. We’re going to be around 4.6 billion bushels of soybeans produced in the United States of America this year.
Favorable weather patterns; technological advances; the machinery is so good, you mentioned John Deere; the ability for us to get the right seeding population, to get it at the right soil planted depth, to use the right fertility at the right time; it’s just amazing compared to where we were just a long time ago.
As an agricultural person, a farm boy, I always point out, remember, environmentally, we’re doing this with [fewer] units of natural resources per bushel produced than we ever have. So we’re just really good at making bushels. The problem, of course, is we don’t need all these bushels.
It’s just a situation where we’re probably in an oversupply situation. And that’s what happens with commodity production. The cure for low prices is low prices. The cure for high prices is high prices. You’re kind of seeing that this year.
Simone Del Rosario: And exports are up this year, so it’s not that we’re not exporting as much. It’s simply, as you said, these yields are pretty incredible and we’ve seen really favorable weather conditions. How are farmers adjusting to this reality?
Damian Mason: Some are going to, unfortunately, put their head in the sand and say, ‘Oh well, you know what? This will all be fine. It’s just a blip.’ Some people like me out here with the agricultural economics angle, have pointed out [a different trend].
I just pulled something [I printed off] almost a year and a half ago. This is a stat from the United States Department of Agriculture, and it’s from the end of year 2022. China was our No. 1 agricultural customer in 2022 with $36 billion of agricultural products bought from the United States. They’re going to be about half that this year.
So what we’ve got now is a very ascending productive capacity in soybeans, 86 million acres planted and harvested, whereas just 30, 40 years ago, we might have been around 60 or 70 million [acres]. So we’ve got a bunch more acres, growing a bunch more bushels per acre. And we did that, we were conditioned to do that in agriculture, to supply the new China tiger, this whole thing about China over the last 20 years.
The problem is China’s plenty supplied. Brazil ramped up production. Argentina ramped up production. Other Asian countries ramped up production, as well as us. So we’re in this situation.
What are farmers doing to adapt? Well, they could switch acres to something else, but with 86 million acres planted, it tells me they didn’t switch off many acres. They could also figure out new ways to sell their product, and that’s where biodiesel is going to come into effect, although that’s more government-driven than farmer-driven.
Simone Del Rosario: You were on a farm recently where they had said, forget about the soybeans. We’re going to be grazing cattle on this land. Can you tell me about that?
Damian Mason: So think about this, Simone. Soybeans were not really much of a crop until post-World War II in the United States. They were grown in Asia 1,000 years ago. But they didn’t really come into mass acreage, broad acre production here in the United States, until really the 1950s.
So we’re going to have 86 million acres. That’s almost 1/4 of our total cropland acres in the United States, just to put that in perspective. Corn is about 90 million, soybeans are about 90 million, those two commodities occupy about one half of all cropland, food producing acres, not counting rangeland and grassland.
So the intriguing part of that episode, that video that you saw, my friend Kelly Garrett in Iowa, a large-scale farmer, also has cattle as well as a cropland. He ran the numbers with his consultant financial adviser on the farm, and he said, ‘We’ve retooled what we think our cost of production is on these soybeans, and at $9 soybeans, which is where we’re hovering right now, a little over $9 per bushel, we think we can make more money by putting a mix of cover crops and forage crops on these fields and putting cattle on them.’
Right now, beef prices are still pretty high. The consumer’s still paying for steaks and cheeseburgers and so there’s a little bit of a shortage of cattle. So he says, ‘What if I took some of my acres out of soybean production and plant it to an array of forage crops, and then turn the cattle in there, intensively grazing it.’
You’re not talking about one cow per acre. You’re talking about a bunch of cows per acre and moving them, maybe two times a day, and really maximizing that. And it looks like that’s going to work.
Most people wouldn’t think that you could do that in Iowa. They would say, ‘Oh, soybeans in Iowa all day long trump cattle.’ But you know, it looks like the cattle are going to make more money per acre on some of his fields than soybeans.
Simone Del Rosario: That’s certainly economic innovation on the farmer’s part to to make that type of dramatic transformation. But to your point, a lot of other farmers are holding out hope. Do you think that, with this 4-year low in prices, do you think there will be a turnaround? Obviously, low prices cure low prices. Are we going to see fewer acres of soybeans planted in the following crops?
Damian Mason: Most of the hope is hinged on this. I pulled up a couple of things in some agricultural media. This one right here is a big one. United States Department of Agriculture announces $99.6 million, almost $100 million, for biofuels and clean energy projects.
You’ve heard about ethanol. Ethanol is in its 20th year now, generally derived from corn. We invented the Renewable Fuel Standard under the George Bush administration 20 years ago. There are approximately 190 ethanol plants that use corn as their feed stuff as their supply to make ethanol. Ethanol then goes into your gas tank. About 10%, 11% of everything that you burn in your tank, on average, is ethanol derived from corn.
Well, we’re kind of looking at doing that with soy with biodiesel. We’ve had biodiesel products before. The new angle is to use the oil. If you crush a soybean, 80% of it ends up as soybean meal, which is best used to feed to a pig or a cow to make a pork chop or a steak. The 20% becomes oil. That oil would be required then to go straight into a refining process to make diesel.
So there’s a lot of hope for a cleaner diesel, a less emission, a less pollutive diesel, derived from using soybean oil. Of course, then you’re going to have a little bit of a glut of soybean meal, which makes a very cheap feed, which also might help bring down the cattle prices, because that would go then to the beef. So I think that’s the biggest hope right there.
The idea that farmers are going to produce less; no farmer that you will ever meet says, ‘You know what I want to do next year? I want to decrease my yields by 10% by doing a crappy job.’ Most of them are saying, ‘I want to go ahead and get more bushels per acre, and I want to be more efficient. I want to be a star producer.’
Tribal and environmental concerns stand in the way of obtaining 25% of US copper
Arizona officials claim the land that is planned for use by the Resolution Copper mine contains resources that are crucial for transitioning the U.S. energy sector to renewables. However, Native American tribes and environmentalists are raising concerns over the project’s potential impacts.
Indigenous groups assert that the proposed mining site lies on sacred ground that should remain undisturbed. Meanwhile, environmental advocates warn of a potential ecological “disaster” if mining plans proceed. The project has been in development for about 20 years, with over $2 billion invested, yet no copper has been extracted to date.
Developers say once operational, the mine could eventually support about a quarter of the nation’s copper demand. The value of this metal is expected to increase by over 75% next year alone, given its essential role in electric vehicles, renewable energy infrastructure, and AI-supporting data centers. Extracting this copper will require creating a two-mile-wide crater, deep enough to hold the Eiffel Tower.
“Put simply – we need copper,” Resolution Copper said in a statement. “With estimates for global copper demand from wind, solar, electric vehicles and battery applications expected to increase by 600%-900% by 2030, it is critical that projects like Resolution Copper are approved to bolster the United States’ copper supply.”
The United States Department of Agriculture’s Environmental Impact Statement highlights several potential consequences of this plan. Emissions from mining operations could affect air quality, and seepage from storage facilities might impact local water quality. Additionally, the presence of radioactive, toxic and hazardous materials poses risks to both environmental and human health.
Local Native American tribal leaders view the mining project as a “desecration” of their sacred lands, and have joined forces with environmentalists to take legal action against Resolution Copper, planning to escalate their fight to the Supreme Court.
“Our Apache war isn’t over, because no longer are they killing us and slaughtering our people and putting us in prisons, they’re gonna take our religion away,” said Naelyn Pike, a Chiricahua Apache activist. “And that’s another act of genocide, because we’re not Apache people if we don’t have no religion.”
Resolution Copper has launched a Native American affairs division to address Indigenous concerns and has spent an estimated $10 million on community assistance for the town of Superior, which surrounds the planned mine. This support is nearly triple the town’s annual revenue, and additional funds have been pledged to develop facilities aimed at boosting Superior’s tourism industry so the community’s economy is not solely reliant on copper mining.
“There’s a lot of misconceptions about mining,” said Leslie Burnette, a San Carlos Apache tribal member and senior advisor of Native American affairs at Resolution Copper. “The main thing that we try to do is let them know what the Resolution Copper project is about. We just want to make them comfortable about our project. I want our reservation to know that Resolution Copper respects and values are traditions. They’re here to support and grow with us.”
Mila Besich-Lira, Superior’s mayor, suggests that final approval for the mine could take another 10 to 20 years but believes it being granted is ultimately inevitable. She described the town’s relationship with the mine as an “arranged marriage” where both entities must coexist, adding that “copper mining isn’t going anywhere.”
CDC studying Michigan farm workers’ blood to fight H5N1 virus
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Tuesday, June 25, an unprecedented study on human blood in hopes that it may provide answers on how to fight the H5N1 virus. The agencies will conduct research on the blood of farm workers to see if they carry H5N1 antibodies. Researchers will also look to see if workers exposed to infected cows have asymptomatic infections.
The research could shed light on whether farm workers are spreading the virus through contact with infected raw milk on their clothes or skin, or whether infected humans can spread the virus to other animals, according to scientists involved in the study.
Dairy farmers have previously been reluctant to do testing. Last week, Michigan offered to pay 20 dairy farms up to $28,000 each to participate in research. The money would be in addition to funds the federal government is offering.
Additionally, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday that it’s launching another round of testing on dairy products, sampling more than 150 products, like raw milk cheeses, cream cheese, ice cream and butter. The additional testing is to shore up gaps in any research the agency may have missed the first time.
The agency’s initial testing showed that some commercial milk and other dairy products contained the remnants of H5N1, but said pasteurization made the products safe to consume.
The latest testing also comes following recent studies on infected milk, in which researchers used a process similar to the flash pasteurization method — the most common process to pasteurize commercial milk in the United States — and found that the process may not fully neutralize all of the virus remnants in milk.
However, scientists cautioned that experiments did not replicate the full flash pasteurization process, including a pre-heating step, and maintained that more research is needed to verify results. An FDA spokesperson said the agency’s studies will be closer to the method used in commercial milk processing.
The testing of farm workers in Michigan comes after two farm workers in the state tested positive for the virus in May.
Meanwhile, efforts across the world are being launched to defend against the virus. Finland announced plans on Wednesday to vaccinate vulnerable populations against bird flu, which would make it the first country to do so.