Bird Flu is latest wild card for dairy farmers

livemint.com:

Milking cows has been a tough business in the past decade, with volatile prices, costs rising and workers hard to find. Now America’s dairy farmers face a new problem: bird flu. Avian influenza has hit dairy farms in at least 12 states after being confirmed in March to have jumped to cattle.

The malady, which can curb cows’ milk production and upend dairy farms’ operations, is the latest curveball for an industry that has grappled with low profit margins, drought and shifting consumer tastes. “Dairy farmers are so stressed to begin with," said Jason Schmidt, a fifth-generation dairy farmer with 75 cows near Newton, Kan. The threat of bird flu “makes it even harder," he said.

Officials estimate that an outbreak can curb a farm’s production by 10% to 20% for several weeks, complicating dairy farmers’ efforts to improve profitability after two years of sliding markets. Pressure is growing for the industry to address the spread, with federal health officials warning that continued outbreaks ratchet up the risk to human health. Federal regulators say the commercial milk supply remains safe and consider the virus low-risk for humans, but people with close contact to infected animals have a greater chance of contracting it.

Increased infections could lead the virus to change and pose a greater threat to human health, said Dr. Nirav Shah, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s principal deputy director. The virus has infected at least 136 herds of cattle across the U.S.

and four dairy workers, according to the CDC. Three of the workers experienced eye symptoms, while a fourth had respiratory symptoms. All four recovered.