Inside the Bungled Bird Flu Response, Where Profits Collide With Public Health

October 21, 2024

Cows in a pasture

(Vanity Fair) – When dairy cows in Texas began falling ill with H5N1, alarmed veterinarians expected a fierce response to contain an outbreak with pandemic-sparking potential. Then politics—and, critics say, a key agency’s mandate to protect dairy-industry revenues—intervened.

This close-knit network, with built-in redundancies, is primed to tackle the awful and unexpected, whether it’s foot-and-mouth disease, swine fever, or an act of agroterrorism. There’s little standing on ceremony, and state veterinarians generally feel free to reach out directly to leading USDA officials. “If we want information, we go up the chain to the top,” says Beth Thompson, South Dakota’s state veterinarian.

That, at least, is how it’s supposed to work. It’s how veterinarians responding to dairy farms in the Texas panhandle earlier this year assumed it would work when they stumbled upon hellish scenes out of a horror movie. Feverish cows in respiratory distress producing trickles of milk. Dying cats. Enough dead barn pigeons and blackbirds to suggest a mass poisoning. Living birds with twisted necks, their heads tilted skyward. (Read More)