United States: Farmers would be given new financial incentives by government sources to combat bird flu in their dairy cattle; this led some of them to appreciate the extra money to absorb the huge cost of the problem.
However, a few farm workers’ advocates doubted the amount of money paid would be enough to persuade them to do more surveillance for the H5N1 virus.
More about the new incentive plan
The plan, as announced by the US Department of Health and Human Services and the US Department of Agriculture on Friday, is to pay up to USD 28,000 over the next four months as necessary for the farms to carry out some preventive activities for bird flu in dairy cattle.
The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will receive about USD 98 million for the implementation of the Territorial Spatial Data Infrastructure.
About the recent spread of bird flu
In late March, the USDA traced the first case of bird flu in cows; i.e. previously, the disease had only been spotted in poultry. After that, about 40 herds with the same microbes got pretty spread across several states.
At present, health officials claim that the virus doesn’t spread efficiently from one person to another; thus, the risk of viral transmission to humans is pretty low.
However, animal scientists assert that a virus like this breeding further in domesticated animals such as cows is dangerous as it brings the virus closer to a human population, where it may be adapted and evolve to become a totally human virus. It could be another pandemonium if it is initiated. Researchers say that it will create another pandemic.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on Friday said, “I think it’s fair to say that our top priority at USDA, given our mission, is to contain this as an animal health event,” and, “Ultimately, we want to eliminate the virus in the industry and develop over time a vaccine to prevent another emergency of H5N1 in cattle.”
Moreover, the director of strategic campaigns for United Farm Worker, Elizabeth Strater, also stated, “There are some really significant resources that are being allocated to the owners of the cattle. But far less is being advocated to the workers who are in close contact and at high risk working in those milking parlors,” as CNN Health reported.
She said, “USD 75 is not going to seem like a good gamble to someone who may be looking at much longer off of work. And USD 75 isn’t going to feed their families.”
Reluctance by farm workers to be tested
According to Strater, the reason for reluctance among the farm workers to be tested, even when showing symptoms, is due to their fear of losing time off work if they are tested positive.
The director of research and public health programs for the National Center for Farmworker Health, Bethany Alcauter, said, “The testing situation is really challenging,” and the way right now of finding about the human cases of H5N1 is “a very passive system,” as CNN Health reported.
Government incentives for the farmers
The government has decided to compensate those farmers who lost milk production owing to the sickness of their cows.
The National Milk Producers Federation has been pleased by the announcement of additional financial help to dairy farmers.
In a statement issued by the group said, “We look forward to continued collaboration and consultation with USDA and other federal agencies as we monitor, understand, and contain this outbreak, and we will do what we can to help dairy farmers understand and benefit from these initiatives as swift implementation is put into motion,” as CNN Health reported.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra stated, “We’ve identified 93 million to be used by CDC to expand our monitoring of people exposed to infected animals, to scale up our testing and analysis capabilities, to determine whether candidate vaccines are effective and to manufacture, store, and distribute additional influenza diagnostic kits,”