USDA takes new steps to better avert bird flu in nation's livestock

April 24 (UPI) -- The Department of Agriculture said Wednesday it's working with other federal agencies to protect the U.S. livestock industry from the H5N1 bird flu threat. A federal order will develop critical baseline information to limit the virus spread.

So far, the USDA said, no changes to the virus have been found that would make it transmissible to humans and between people.

"While cases among humans in direct contact with infected animals are possible, our partners at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) believe that the current risk to the public remains low," the USDA said in a Wednesday statement.

USDA said, "The novel movement of H5N1 between wild birds and dairy cows requires further testing and time to develop a critical understanding to support any future courses of action."

USDA added that it "has identified spread between cows within the same herd, spread from cows to poultry, spread between dairies associated with cattle movements, and cows without clinical signs that have tested positive. On April 16, APHIS microbiologists identified a shift in an H5N1 sample from a cow in Kansas that could indicate that the virus has an adaptation to mammals."

According to USDA, the Centers for Disease Control has conducted further analysis on that and it did not change their overall risk assessment for the general public. That's because what was observed has been seen before in other mammalian infections and "does not impact viral transmission."

The USDA said beginning April 29 interstate movement of dairy cattle will require a negative test for influenza A virus and owners of cattle testing positive will have to provide "epidemiological information, including animal movement tracing."

The tests will be immediately required for lactating cattle. The testing requirements for other classes of dairy cattle will be based on scientific factors on the virus and the evolving risk profile, according to the USDA.

Mandatory reporting also will be required when laboratories and state veterinarians get positive influenza A nucleic acid detection results. The same mandatory reporting will apply to positive influenza A serology diagnostic results in livestock.

Due to rapid spread of the H5N1 virus in April, a Texas poultry facility stopped production and was ordered to cull 1.6 million laying hens and 337,000 pullets -- or young female chickens- - at Cal-Maine's Parmer County facility near the New Mexico border.

In July, a bird flu outbreak hit the Welsh coastline, killing hundreds of seabirds in one of Britain's most important seabird habitats.

In February, Harvard Law school researcher professor Ann Linder and New York University professor Dale Jamieson warned the U.S. had "blind spots" in strategies to deal with threats like bird flu.

The researchers said the United States originates more zoonotic diseases than any other nation in the world.