For those in California, our union, University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE) has blown the whistle on the inadequate avian bird flu testing in the state. There is only one lab rated in the state of California at UC Davis that is responsible for timely testing of poultry and dairy. You can read the article at the following: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-12-01/lab-worker...
We had an informational picket at UC Davis two weeks ago, and you can find more details at our website at https://upte.org/news/upte-members-at-uc-davis-blow-the-whis...
The University of California system has failed to keep the health and safety of our food supply in safe and working order, with lab testing sometimes waiting weeks for turn around, causing avian bird flu to spread and causing mass culling of chickens, and tainting diary, and increasing the likelihood of animal to human spread. UPTE members at CAHFS are raising concerns about severe understaffing and unsafe working conditions that jeopardize their critical role in testing for diseases like Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (H5N1). After five out of seven lab workers quit since January due to inadequate compensation and a lack of support, the timely and accurate monitoring of our nation's food supply is at risk, potentially leading to catastrophic outbreaks affecting poultry and human health. Your can support us by urging CAHFS management to address these issues and protect the health and safety of our communities. You can help by emailing the Dean of Veterinary Medicine, Dean Dr. Mark Stetter to support staffing and safety at CAHFS using the following link: https://upte.org/cahfs
Why is it the responsibility of the universities and not the state generally?
UC is the direct lab administrator and the focus of the labor union because that's who their labor contract is with.
There are both state and federal agencies with responsibilities, including the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the US Department of Agriculture, and the US Food and Drug Administration.
Probably because they’re trying to put pressure on California Animal Health & Food Safety Lab System (CAHFS) which is affiliated with UC Davis and jointly advised by University of California and California Department of Food and Agriculture.
Recently posted related news: https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/bird-flu-spread-cattl... (America Lost Control of the Bird Flu, Setting the Stage for Another Pandemic)
HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42496619 (no discussion though)
There was on the Scientific America copy (10 points, 3 days ago, 6 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490096
This was a well researched piece of journalism. Thanks for re-posting it here!
amp? is that still a thing?
It shouldn't be.
Not exactly related, but there was just a recall put out on some pet foods because of bird flu. Seems a house cat died from it. And several more died from raw milk.
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/25/bird-flu-pet-food-recall-no...
My cat was ill this past weekend but recovered. Then I saw the article you mention and it started me thinking. I've only fed my cat Friskies wet cat food recently. I think I'm going to try to stick with the seafood flavors for a while.
Real nervous we're all ignoring this one. It's like learned nothing in the past four years.
I hear people saying this, but at the same time, I feel like I read about bird flu almost daily in stories that involve scientists and researchers, so I’m not sure who is ignoring it or what we should be doing differently.
* Mandatory bird flu vaccination for farm workers in high-risk large facilities.[1]
* Mandatory N95 (or better) PPE for farm workers in high-risk large facilities.
* Mandatory testing for bulk milk tanks.
We're living in a crazy surrealist theatrical performance when we charge animal activists with bioterrorism charges (despite wearing head-to-toe PPE[2]), but meanwhile farm worker in these high-risk facilities (who are around sick poultry constantly) aren't required to have any sort of protections.[3]
Unfortunately half of American are currently anti-science enough to oppose these sensible, minimal measures tooth and nail. If this really is an adversary nation bot psyop to divide Americans[4] and get us act against our own self-interest... well played, adversary nation!
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42248570
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42292384
[3] https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/10/bird-flu-virus-dairy-far...
[4] https://old.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1gouvit/youre_being_t...
If they had a vaccine why would they need facemasks?
I hated going to the grocery store in a facemask, much less working a 12h shift at a poultry farm. That sounds awful to me.
Oh , I guess if the vaccine worked poorly or unpredictably like the flu vaccine.
Still, I personally think facemasks at a poultry farm are impractical. But I don't really know, I've never worked at one and have never met anyone that has.
Working 12h shifts in a poultry farm sound awful with or without a mask. The air there likely calls for PPE regardless of bird flu.
The standard wolf crying scenario. We just be eating by the wolf at the end of the story.
- "so I’m not sure who is ignoring it or what we should be doing differently"
It's the US government who's ignoring it. They're acting as if they have inverted priorities—putting agricultural industry interests first, as well as short-term politics and optics.
The federal vaccine effort seems to at the token-effort level, on track to repeat 2020 all over again. I'm inferring this from looking at budget figures: Warp Speed spent (I think) $18 billion in 2020, while the current efforts total just 1-2% of that [0] (mostly one single grant to Moderna). That looks to me on track to repeat 2020: a year or more without a (fully deployed and mass-produced) vaccine—tens of trillions in losses in the future, because government leaders aren't proactive-thinking enough to invest a few billion today.
(Here's a remarkable figure from [0]: the federal government is currently spending 7x more subsidizing livestock farms for their economic hardship from HPAI than on developing vaccines for it).
Another major failing is the lack of effort (again mirroring 2020) on monitoring early outbreaks. The pandemic strain of HPAI doesn't yet exist. It's likely to come into existence, if there's large numbers of HPAI human infections, simultaneous with infections with human-adpated influenza strains—that's where you'd get the highly transmissible pandemic strain, from genetic crossover with ordinary flu.
But: most farm worker HPAI outbreaks are going unnoticed [1,2]. There's very little concerted effort to monitor and prevent crossover infections in the high-risk sectors, on livestock farms. (Again, I feel we're repeating 2020: prioritizing short-term industry considerations over public welfare—as if it's more important to minimize hardship to the dairy industry, than to prevent a pandemic). Sure; there's token government efforts that look like they're helping keep farm workers safe—but empirically they're simply not working. A complication is that this industry hires large numbers of undocumented/illegal farm labor: people who deliberately avoid interactions with government officials; as well as people who avoid or are priced out of healthcare access.
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/24/health/america-bird-flu-n...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/health/bird-flu-diaries-f...
[2] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-26/bird-fl...
The problem isn't what wasn't learned but the fact that it became one of the flags of political propaganda.
If this reaches a pandemic level we're going to witness a massive catastrophe because the Public Health as an institution was completely obliterated at a global level for political gain.
Robert Kenedy Junior, the guy who said COVID-19 was designed to not affect Jews[0], will be in charge of the HHS.
[0]https://www.timesofisrael.com/rfk-jr-who-mused-covid-was-des...
What did he actually say? I skimmed the article and didn’t see it quoted.
From AP, RFK said:
> "COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” he added. “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted at that or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential of impact for that."
The article notes he claims that this quote "twisted" his words.
https://apnews.com/article/robert-f-kennedy-jr-covid-comment...
Hey, at least egg prices will be lower! (/s)
Cheap political quips aside, it makes me uneasy and frustrated that vaccination is currently very popular but is being turned into a political issue just for a big grift.
The overwhelming majority of research shows vaccines are safe and effective. While I personally think it’s worth verifying research to the contrary, too many people make contrarianism with cherry-picking against science-backed norms their entire personality.
Cherry-picked Contrarianism as a personality is tolerable in limited doses, like from a certain batch of folks on HN, but not something I’d want from policymakers.
As a homesteaders, very frightened by this. Many farmers I know gladly feed their poultry raw chicken scraps, eggs, etc. It takes one sick animal to lose dozens.
Feeding animals their own species is a recipe for disease outbreaks. I'm astonished every time I hear about it.
It’s like they never heard of scrapie, kuru, or vCJD - or they just figure it can’t happen here.
Yeah, I think at this point it is safer to just skip meat entirely or only eating meat from known sources.
I won't feed my backyard chickens any poultry products, cooked canned or otherwise. No sense in exposing them to the same species diseases and prions.
I'm curious about your economy as a homesteader, what do you produce for yourself or trade? how does your days/seasons look like? Do you see your days are easy chores or hard chores (no pun intended)? What's your long term todo list ?
Regarding your fear, is it because the farmers you know lives close to your own poultry ?
It’s really sad. Some of the remaining cats are still recovering. And they’ve had to throw out all their feed as a precaution (very expensive). They’re looking for donations to survive.
What’s scary though is how it spread. They had less than 40 animals spread out over 5 acres. It’s odd that it affected most of their cats.
My understanding is when birds get sick, they tend to hide somewhere on the ground, in a bush or the like and are easy prey for felines. I would guess a flock of birds were infected and they just were all over the area.
Last I heard, food disposal was more than a precaution; food from raw poultry products were viewed as the most likely route of infection.
How are you gonna create a panic with these sort of facts, sir
5 acres is 140 meters by 140 meters. That's roughly one city block.
I think we'd be pretty concerned if humans were infecting each others outdoors from a city block away.
But it doesn't sound like it was spread cat to cat if they think it was the food - seems like it wouldn't have mattered how much space they had if they were all fed contaminated feed.
5 acres is pretty confined for cats like that. In the wild they would have 100s-1000s of acres per animal.
40 cats in 5 acres is 0.125 acres per cat - this "sanctuary" is sized like a zoo.
It is certainly smaller than their wild range. Mountain lions have wild ranges in the 10,000-100,000 acres.
5 acres is literally an oversized backyard.
Tell people how long it would take you to walk five acres.
By D&D rules, it would take you 2.4 hours to visit every 5-foot square in 5-acres. 2.1 if you're a wood elf.
An acre is a unit of area, not distance - this is like asking how long it would take you to drink six degrees Fahrenheit.
A few minutes of I was moving briskly? 5 acres is tiny.
5 acres is one or two city blocks. So maybe 7-10 minutes to walk the perimeter depending on your pace?
None of these answers are honest.
rather shocking.
1 square mile is 640 acres.
5 acres is 460 feet per side.
5 acres is about the indoor size of a typical Walmart or Costco.
If we're not accounting for terrain difficulties, then walking the perimeter of a 5 acre rectangular plot of land would take more than 5 minutes but less than 10 minutes.
[dead]
What?
The normalization of eating dead animal flesh and using other animal products is one of the greatest threats to humanity.
It’s the greatest source and risk for pandemics. The horrible conditions in which the animals are raised means they’re far bigger consumers of antibiotics than humans, greatly reducing the efficacy of antibiotics for humans. It’s one of the larger direct sources of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s one of the greatest sources of water and land pollution. It’s one of the largest reasons for deforestation. And it’s one of the largest sources of land use and clearing while providing only a tiny fraction of the world’s calories (and protein, for that matter).
You don’t need to be an ethical vegan to recognize there’s something horribly wrong here.
Eating animals wasn't "normalized". It is normal. We couldn't exist as a species without that adaptation.
The problem now is the scale and methods of farming that meat.
Reducing meat consumption is a worthwhile pursuit, but it's not meaningfully going to change any time soon, so it's better to target the farming practices.
Targeting the farm practices will severely impact the bottom line of important industries, I doubt it will ever happen.