Bird Flu Wreaks Havoc on California’s Dairy Industry, Could Disrupt Food Supply Chain

A cow grazes in a field at a dairy farm in Petaluma, Calif., on April 26, 2024. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A bird flu outbreak in California is creating chaos in the state’s dairy industry and could disrupt the food supply chain if the state continues to push COVID-19-like restrictions on farms and livestock markets, according to Alexandra “Ali” Macedo, whose family owns Tulare Sales Yard, the oldest livestock market in the state.

Macedo, an environmental consultant in the dairy industry and a newly elected Republican state assemblywoman, told The Epoch Times that state interference in the industry could be hurting dairies more than the disease itself.

Macedo said the effect on dairy farms has been devastating, and reminiscent of what she said to be the state’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, with rules and regulations often changing.

“I call it COVID for cows,” she said. “That is the easiest way to describe it.”

For the past month, the state has been making rules that have been “shutting down the industry,” she said.

Normally, California allows producers to send cattle to other dairies or livestock markets without permits, but now permits are required. Quarantined dairies can obtain permits to send their dairy and beef cattle to auction, but there aren’t enough case workers to process the permit applications, Macedo said.

It’s taking “way too long” for dairymen to get permits approved, so they are sending their animals directly to slaughterhouses and bypassing live markets, hoping to either turn a small profit or cut their losses, she said.

But the auctions at live markets are important to ensure that farmers get fair market value for their animals, because there are multiple buyers from various slaughterhouses and competitive bidding, she said.

Because profit margins on cattle were already tight before the outbreak, many dairy producers are now in “a bad situation,” Macedo said.

It “doesn’t really matter” if the animals are infected if they’re going to slaughter, she said.

“They’re not going to another dairy site that could potentially spread this disease ... to healthy cows,” she said. “They’re ultimately going to the kill floor.”

Disrupting the Food Supply Chain

Macedo said her family’s livestock market is operating at about 20 to 40 percent of normal production because of the new restrictions.

Such changes in the supply of beef cattle and milk could disrupt the food supply chain and lead to higher prices in the grocery store, she said.

Macedo also said she is concerned that state regulation of the markets could eventually create a situation in which dairies will be selling too many animals at the same time, resulting in an oversupply of meat, or that dairy producers will hold on to cattle hoping to fetch a better price later at an auction, thus creating a shortage of beef.

“So it’s about having a steady cycle of animals ... making their way to the slaughterhouses,” she said. “Anytime that you mess with a link in the food supply chain, there are unintended consequences in one way or another ... and eventually the producer and the consumer are going to pay the price.”

Cows graze in a field at a dairy farm in Petaluma, Calif., on April 26, 2024. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

‘COVID for Cows’

A total of 259 dairies in California have been affected by H5N1 avian flu as of Nov. 8, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) reported. The number jumped from 233 dairies in one week.

Bird flu was first detected in California dairy cattle in August.

California and its dairy farmers are trying to figure things out as they go, much like businesses did during the COVID-19 pandemic, Macedo said.

“They’re trying to stop the spread, and we all obviously want to do the same thing, but they are also creating these guidelines and rules for the transport and transfer of cattle that aren’t helping,” she said.

Currently, the state is quarantining dairies where cows have tested positive for bird flu, prohibiting producers from moving any animals from these sites for 14 days, she said.

She said that most infected younger cows are sick for a couple of days “and then they’re fine” but that older cattle can’t fight the disease as well.

“An average dairy cow can live over five years, and we also don’t send them to slaughter until either they’ve reached the end-of-life cycle or there is something causing them to no longer be a viable dairy cow,” she said.

According to Macedo, avian flu doesn’t affect “in any way” the quality of the meat or milk.

State and federal authorities, including the U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture (USDA), have confirmed that pasteurized milk and inspected beef from cows potentially affected by bird flu are safe to consume.

“This only impacts dairy cattle, and we are hoping that it remains that way, but we’re also being very careful to make sure that this doesn’t cross over into beef cattle,” Macedo said.

She said she’s now becoming “cautiously optimistic” that the state may have recently started taking “a better approach” by meeting with dairy producers and livestock market owners, such as her father, and listening more closely to their concerns.

“My family is blessed enough that we’ll be able to survive this, but there are a lot of businesses that will not survive this if the state continues to operate in this way,” she said.

CDFA public affairs director Steve Lyle and state veterinarian Dr. Annette Jones didn’t respond to requests for comment before publication.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Bird Flu in Humans

Dairy farm workers are doing everything they can to wash their hands more often and wear masks, but many have accepted that they will eventually get sick, Macedo said.

The H5N1 avian flu is one of various strains of influenza A viruses that typically infect birds but can also infect people.

The USDA confirmed bird flu for the first time in dairy cows on farms in Texas and Kansas in March, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first reported case of cow-to-human transmission of H5N1 bird flu on April 1.

Since then, both the USDA and CDC have confirmed infected cattle in hundreds of dairy herds in 15 states, and that number “continues to grow nationally,” with almost all new infections identified in herds in California.

Although the disease can spread from birds to cattle, and from cow to cow, no human-to-human transmission has been detected in the United States.

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has confirmed 21 human cases as of Nov. 6 and has identified one other probable case. CDPH also reported that all the people affected had contact with animals at different farms and have experienced mild symptoms, including conjunctivitis, more commonly known as “pink eye,” but there have been no hospitalizations.

Symptoms of the bird flu in humans may include cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle or body aches, headaches, fatigue, fever, eye redness, shortness of breath, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting.

As a precaution, officials have asked residents not to eat raw milk, raw cheese, or undercooked meat products. Residents are also advised to avoid contact with sick or dead animals and materials contaminated with bird feces and to report sick or dead birds to local animal control agencies. Sick birds may be unable to fly, have seizures, have difficulty walking, or be found dead.

The county also advised residents to take down bird feeders and communal bird baths to reduce the spread of the virus among birds and to keep pets away from sick and dead birds. There is some risk of the virus being transmitted to mammals such as dogs, cats, and wild mammals, especially if they eat infected birds.

Bird flu was first identified in geese in China in 1996 and among people in Hong Kong the following year. It has since spread to every continent, and nearly a quarter-century later, in 2020, a new variant of highly pathogenic Avian influenza known as H5N1 was detected in Europe among wild birds and then in Canada and the United States in 2021, according to Yale Medicine.

California’s bird flu outbreak would affect food production. Above, a photo of milk on display at a grocery store in Columbia, Md., on June 8, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Lost Milk Production

Joey Airoso, owner of Airoso Dairy in Tulare County, told The Epoch Times that about 15 of his cattle have died from the bird flu, while many others have lost their milk production value.

Airoso’s dairy normally milks about 2,900 head of cattle, which from Oct. 9 to Oct. 26 produced about four gallons of milk per cow, per day, less than before his cattle were infected, amounting to about $200,000 in lost milk production in a little more than two weeks.

Many pregnant heifers have already lost their calves because sick animals will abort the fetus if they get high fevers from the disease. For this reason, dairy producers won’t know the full extent of their losses until spring, when fewer calves are born and less milk is produced, because there are fewer lactating cows, he said.

“A fair amount” of his cattle have also dropped in value, Airoso said.

A healthy dairy cow usually sells for about $3,500, but cows sold for beef because they’re no longer viable milk producers are only worth about $1,500, so farmers are losing about $2,000 per head, he said.

“It’s only been a month since the flu virus hit our herd, so we don’t know what that damage is yet. It’s going to take us 30 to 60 days to know which cows are still going to be productive and which cows we’re going to have to get rid of,” he said.

Tulare Sales Yard

David Macedo, father of Alexandra Macedo and the owner of Tulare Sales Yard, which was founded in 1939, confirmed to The Epoch Times that when the state banned cattle from quarantined dairies from being transported to auction without a permit, many producers sold their cattle directly to meat-processing plants.

“The state did not want those cows coming to the livestock markets,” Macedo said. “When they quarantined the dairies and wouldn’t allow us to take in any of the livestock, we felt like they betrayed us.”

Over the past month or so, business has plummeted from about 1,500 to 2,000 cattle a week down to about 500, he said.

“This has not been the case in the past, but at this point in my business, I am what they call a slaughter-only facility, which means I can only sell lactating cows directly to the packer—I can’t sell them to anybody else,” he said.

But last week, Macedo got a shipment of more than 500 dairy cattle, a sign the state might be loosening its grip on the dairy industry and allowing the situation to get “back to normal,” he said.

“Cattle we’ve been missing out on for the last month showed up,” he said.

Macedo said he recently called California state officials about the issue and said, “This is wrong,” and he received a positive response acknowledging they “need to be looking at this from a different perspective.”

The state was making decisions “kind of like they did during COVID,” he said; “they’ve made decisions for businesspeople that are really maybe not in their best interest all the time.”

During the pandemic lockdowns, many mom-and-pop stores and restaurants went out of business, and people in the dairy business are worried the same thing could happen to them.

“The cattle haulers probably took the biggest beating,” he said, and many of them likely would not be able to survive another month under the state-imposed restrictions, Macedo said.

Cows graze in a field at a dairy farm in Petaluma, Calif., on April 26, 2024. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“They just couldn’t,” he said. “If this had lasted much longer, it would put a lot of people out of business. There are guys right now that would tell you they’re losing a million bucks.”

Though the state was alerted to the bird flu outbreak “fairly quickly,” nothing has worked to prevent the virus from spreading from dairy to dairy, Macedo said.

Now, almost all the dairy herds in the Central Valley have been hit with the disease, Macedo said.

“They couldn’t slow it down, and then, when it got to critical mass where there was no livestock being moved at all into any marketing-type facilities, that’s when people thought, ‘OK, we’ve got to do something here,’ because now all the herds have it,” he said.

Macedo said that until a couple of weeks ago, he had been on the phone making several calls a day to local leaders and state agencies asking for solutions and finally got a meeting with Dr. Annette Jones, the state veterinarian.

Macedo told the state agencies there is no science to back up the notion that livestock markets are spreading bird flu.

“They don’t know how this is spreading, but it’s not the markets that are spreading it,” he said. “It’s all over the country, and all over the state, and it keeps moving north. We’re not doing that.”

Despite quarantines, dairies outside his trade area have been hit with the disease, leading Macedo to believe the virus is being spread dairy to dairy by wild birds—not cattle.

And once it hits a dairy, it spreads “like wildfire,” he said.

Macedo’s barn essentially provides temporary housing for livestock bound for the packing house after the animals are sold. When bird flu first hit the state, Tulare Sales Yard quit selling lactating dairy cattle as a precaution, he said.

“We self-imposed that and a few things that cost us money for the greater good of the industry,” he said.

Under current regulations, the barns must be thoroughly cleaned and sprayed with disinfectants anywhere the cattle have been, and the water troughs must be emptied, cleaned, disinfected, and filled with fresh water daily, Macedo said.

“Before I allow other cattle to come in the next day, I have to disinfect my facility anywhere those cattle have touched,” he said.

How Bird Flu Spread in California

State Assemblyman Heath Flora (R-Ripon) told The Epoch Times he is concerned about the rapid spread of bird flu in the Central Valley and the impact on California dairy farms.

The outbreak began when a load of California dairy cattle was sold and shipped out of state where the healthy animals were mixed with another herd that was infected with bird flu, he said. However, government agencies haven’t released any official details about how the infected herd got back into California without bird flu being detected.

“Something happened,” and the California cattle were shipped back, Flora said.

“It did not start in California. Nobody realized that they were infected with bird flu when they came back to California, and then they got dispersed throughout the dairies in Central Valley, Tulare region,“ he said. ”Nobody knew that they were infected until it was too late.”

The policies that were put in place were “absolutely killing the cattle and meat industry,” Flora said.

He said the state should listen more closely to what experts in the dairy industry are saying about the disease because “nobody wants to stop the spread more than they do.”