University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture / Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station

As highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses adapt to infect a broad range of species, including one recent human case, the Center of Excellence for Poultry Science has expanded the outlook for its second annual international conference. The International Avian Influenza and One Health Emerging Issues Summit will be held in person and online, Sept. 30-Oct. 3, at the Don Tyson Center for Agricultural Sciences in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

In the first avian flu summit last year, 23 speakers made presentations over two days, and 1,842 people registered from 81 countries. This year, the summit remains free and will have 46 speakers over four days. Guillermo Tellez-Isaias, poultry science research professor for the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, is one of 14 organizers for the summit, hosted by the Division of Agriculture and the University of Arkansas Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.

University of California, Davis / School of Veterinary Medicine

Below are recent articles on avian flu with associated UD experts in poultry, dairy, wildlife, diagnostics, etc.

• New York Times: Bird Flu Is Infecting More Mammals. What Does That Mean for Us?
• UC Davis News: Media Experts on Avian Influenza
• UC Davis Veterinary Medicine News: How Bird Flu Virus Fragments Get into Milk Sold in Stores, and What the Spread of H5N1 in Cows Means for the Dairy Industry and Milk Drinkers
• UC Davis Veterinary Medicine News: UC Experts Create Map of Avian Flu Spread

UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine experts include Maurice Pitesky, Rodrigo Gallardo, Marcela Uhart, and Noelia Silva-del-Rio.

University of California / Agriculture and Natural Resources

The University of California WaterFowl Alert Network is the commercial "offspring" of a 4-year USDA grant with Univ of Delaware that utilizes a combination of radar, satellite imagery and telemetry to make daily predictions of waterfowl (the main reservoir of High Path AI) abundance and location in over 30 states including California. The tool takes both farm data and off-farm data to make risk models of which farms are at greater risk of HPAI outbreaks.

Handout: Preparing for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza: Tips and resources for poultry owners

University of Connecticut / College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources

The college is working to provide expertise to media, producers, and the public in regards to avian influenza. They have called together a college-wide group with faculty/staff from several units to make sure as many areas of expertise as possible are represented. Their faculty/staff have worked with media on several stories and are working on content that will also appear in UConn Today with expert Q&As and research as it is published. The CT Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory located at UConn is also prepared to support testing.

Relevant links:

• How is Connecticut keeping milk — and people — safe from bird flu?
• Connecticut Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory

University of Delaware / College of Agriculture and Natural Resources

The Delmarva Peninsula is a poultry powerhouse. The University of Delaware College of Agriculture and Natural Resources has research, teaching and extension efforts related to highly pathogenic avian influenza.

Georgie Cartanza, UD Cooperative Extension poultry extension agent, brings industry experience to UD. A chicken grower for 18 years and experience working for a poultry integrator, Cartanza helps other growers troubleshoot on-farm problems. She educates them on keeping their flocks safe from diseases.

Senior scientist Brian Ladman leads the University of Delaware Poultry Health System, which has two state-of-the-art laboratories that test chickens for avian influenza viruses. Lasher Laboratory is located in the top U.S. county for broiler production and helps ensure each flock is free of viruses before movement to processing. Allen Laboratory assists biological companies with research on developing vaccines for the virus.

Ladman collaborates with wildlife ecology professor Jeffrey Buler on research on the role of wild birds in spreading HPAI. Delmarva is an important overwintering area for geese and ducks; Buler and his lab use weather radar and GPS tracking to see where waterfowl are and how close they are to poultry farms. The research can help warn chicken growers the virus might be near. Buler’s lab is well-known for developing the algorithms for mapping bird distributions at the ground with weather radar.

University of Georgia

Help prevent avian influenza in Georgia
Avian influenza poses risk to all poultry operations, from backyard flocks to the state's $22.8 billion commercial industry. The key to preventing the spread of the disease is biosecurity. All bird owners should take measures to prevent the exposure of flocks to avian flu. This site includes flyers in English and Spanish with contact information for poultry scientist Casey Ritz.

Iowa State University

Numerous faculty and staff are involved in the response to the avian influenza outbreak. With the largest production animal caseload in the U.S., the Iowa State University ISU) Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (VDL) is an essential resource in detecting and mitigating any animal disease outbreak among livestock or poultry. An ISU VDL diagnostician, Dr. Drew Magstadt, detected that an illness spreading among dairy herds was highly pathogenic avian influenza. Dr. Magstadt has been interviewed by numerous national and international media organizations about his discovery.

Preprint of journal article describing discovery of HPAI in dairy (peer review pending)

Other ISU experts include: Dr. Yuko Sato, associate professor of veterinary diagnostic and production animal medicine and Dr. Phil Jardon clinical associate professor of veterinary diagnostic and production animal medicine and the university’s Extension veterinarian for dairy.

ISU Extension and Outreach HPAI in dairy resources

Q&A from The Conversation (2022): Bird flu is killing millions of chickens and turkeys across the US

University of Maryland / College of Agriculture and Natural Resources

The University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources has been researching and monitoring Avian influenza for many years. Their research faculty and extension agents have been working with the state’s farmers, government and industry officials, and policy makers to prepare for, manage and minimize outbreaks such as the one we are now facing.

Principal Extension agents Jennifer Rhodes and Jonathan Moyle work closely with farmers and have produced training materials, including videos outlining biosecurity measures to ensure Maryland’s poultry industry is prepared for threats like H5N1.

Their veterinary medicine team is collaborating with state diagnostic laboratories, federal agencies, and academic and private industry partners to address HPAI. Dr. Nathan Tablante is a biosecurity expert with extensive experience in managing HPAI in chickens, and Dr. Mostafa Ghanem is an epidemiologist with extensive background working with poultry who specializes in developing advanced techniques for surveillance, prevention, and control of infectious diseases.

Dr. Jaekeum Park is an influenza expert with the capability of testing for the presence of influenza viruses and Dr. Xioping Zhu is developing a nasal flu vaccine that could be adapted for use against HPAI and used in humans and animals.

Wildlife ecologist Dr. Jennifer Mullinax tracked the arrival and progression of H5N1 in North America and published a paper in the spring of 2023 outlining an urgent management approach that brings people together from across disciplines and jurisdictions and is much like dealing with a human pandemic. More recently, Dr. Kristen Coleman studied the transmission of avian influenza in cats, and put forth an argument on April 30, 2024, suggesting that domestic cats should be tested for HPAI to reduce risk of transmission to humans.

Assistant professors Andrew Broadbent and Younggeon Jin are developing techniques to grow miniature, artificial airways and intestines from chicken and duck cells that can be used to study the virus without housing and infecting live birds. Their work provides tools for studying how the virus replicates and evolves in birds to identify the barriers that keep the disease from jumping species.

AGNR’S Response to the Deadly Bird Flu Sweeping the Country from Summer 2023 alumni magazine

Web article/press release on threat posed by H5N1 featuring UMD wildlife ecologist. April 2023.

University of Minnesota Extension

University of Minnesota Extension's team of dedicated educators, veterinarians and pathologists has been working across agencies and organizations to keep dairy farmers and the public up to date on avian influenza in dairy via Extension's Animal and Livestock news feed. 

One item in the news feed is an April 29 episode of Extension's The Moos Room podcast. In this episode Dr. Joe Armstrong, Extension livestock educator and DVM, discusses what veterinarians and producers need to know from the guidance document for the federal order requiring H5N1 pre-movement testing for lactating dairy cattle crossing state lines. Since its 2020 launch, The Moos Room has produced 228 episodes, had listeners in 71 countries, and been downloaded approximately 36,000 times.

Mississippi State University / Extension Service

Mississippi State University's Extension Service developed an information sheet for producers related to avian influenza.

University of Missouri-Columbia / Extension

MU Extension urges biosecurity to mitigate HPAI on dairy farms
University of Missouri Extension dairy specialists are providing guidance to dairy producers on mitigating the risks of spreading the HPAI virus to dairy cows in the state. They are also underscoring the safety of the milk supply.

University of Nebraska–Lincoln

There is a lot of concern about spread of avian influenza among both beef and dairy producers in Nebraska. University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s BeefWatch newsletter to several thousand cattle producers, industry partners, faculty at peer institutions and media members across the beef industry (mostly in Nebraska but also beyond). A recent BeefWatch podcast provided a good overview of the current strain of avian influenza affecting dairy cattle, along with basic information about spread, confirmed cases, etc.

University of New Hampshire

Research & Testing: The serology department at the NH Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (NHVDL) at the University of New Hampshire tests blood from approximately 6,500 chickens annually from backyard and commercial operations in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Backyard and commercial owners and veterinarians can also submit carcasses for autopsy by the NHVDL, which checks for avian influenza infection using rapid antigen screening tests and pathological findings. Suspected cases are sent to other veterinary labs and the USDA National Veterinary Services Lab for more testing and confirmation. These diagnostic services are conducted in collaboration with the NH Department of Agriculture Markets and Foods (NHDAMF) and provided to various clients, stakeholders and other state agencies.

The NHVDL also tests deceased domestic and wild birds and deceased domestic and wild mammals for avian influenza. The lab has no current research into avian influenza.

Education & Extension: UNH Extension offers a Poultry Health & Management for the Small Flock resource that chicken owners can use to identify symptoms of avian influenza. This resource offers guidance on identifying animals showing signs of avian influenza and on biosecurity measures aimed at preventing outbreaks.

Cornell University / College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Cornell University experts are working diligently to advance understanding around avian flu’s impacts to dairy consumers and producers alike, across New York state and beyond.

• Recent Cornell Chronicle news story on Cornell CALS efforts to support NYS residents with avian flu updates
• Cornell Institute for Food Safety Office Hours update on the HPAI in cattle topic
• Cornell Institute for Food Safety Fact sheet and related resource webpage
• Cornell’s PRO-DAIRY herd and health management guidelines
• Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine – Animal Health Diagnostics Center – information on testing and diagnostics

The Ohio State University

The Ohio State University’s Dr. Andy Bowman, an expert on influenza, has appeared recently in the stories below:

• Time: Why Experts Are Worried About Bird Flu in Cows
• NBC News (video): New concern about bird flu in cows as traces of the virus appear in more milk samples
• NY Times: Bird Flu Spreads to Dairy Cows
• Stat: Early tests of H5N1 prevalence in milk suggest U.S. bird flu outbreak in cows is widespread

Oregon State University Extension

Oregon State University Extension has activated its internal cross-program issue team on HPAI in response to the recent developments. This team includes subject-matter experts representing wildlife, livestock (dairy), small farms, and 4-H plus communicators. They support internal coordination and extend accurate information to their Extension audiences through Extension channels in alignment with agency partners.

They first organized this team in 2022 when HAPI in birds was first confirmed in the Pacific Flyway and, soon after, in Oregon. With recent developments, they added livestock expertise to the team. Recent content includes an educational article on avian flu in dairy cattle, and a curated information page (which shows as an “announcement link on other pages, such as the dairy topic page).

Penn State / Extension / College of Agricultural Sciences

Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences Faculty Approach Avian Flu from Many Sides
Our One Health effort addresses health as an integrated challenge at the intersections among people, animals, plants, and the environment. Our faculty are tackling persistent and critical challenges such as highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) from multiple disciplines. The Penn State Poultry, Dairy, Livestock, and Vector-borne Disease Extension teams contribute expertise to this multifaceted and high-stakes problem. They are behind both research into the physiology of this disease and the development and delivery of grassroots biosecurity education to producers and processors to help minimize the risk of spread and illness.

Experts in our College are key players on the state’s HPAI task force, which developed plans for how to prevent, respond to, and recover from any potential outbreak in the state, such as the one that occurred in 2022 and 2023. Our Extension staff act as liaisons between farms and state and federal agriculture officials. They helped to direct depopulation and disposal efforts and assisted with hands-on training for producers on the protocol for taking samples from birds for virus testing. They held educational sessions to help Plain Sect farmers develop and implement biosecurity plans and helped deliver online trainings to Spanish-speaking audiences. We are taking the lessons learned from this outbreak and applying them to future situations in this ongoing challenge.

Penn State’s Poultry Extension Team Helps to Develop an HPAI Action Plan for the State’s Producers
Being smack-dab in the middle of the Atlantic flyway, Pennsylvania was not spared in the 2022–2023 HPAI outbreak.

"We wanted to make sure that biosecurity was at the top of producers' minds because even before HPAI was known to be affecting commercial flocks in Pennsylvania last year, we knew that there were threats in our environment," said Penn State poultry scientist John Boney. "We had a lot of industry-wide planning meetings, including training on the National Poultry Improvement Plan's 14-step process for writing a biosecurity plan that, if implemented, should help protect flocks from disease."

Boney, leader of Penn State Extension's poultry team, said tabletop exercises simulating HPAI in a large layer complex helped producers understand what might happen if their flocks tested positive.

"How will we handle the euthanasia? How will we handle the bird composting? How will we handle the cleaning and disinfection?," Boney said. "Extension was at the table helping plan that out with compost calculators to understand the material needs, helping source these materials in mock situations, determining how much it was going to cost and the logistics of making that happen in various settings."

"Once we had our first presumptive positive flock in Pennsylvania based on some of the clinical signs, our subject matter experts worked with those producers on site calculating the material needed to be able to compost over 1 million hens on the first premise," Boney said. "Extension served as a sounding board to the state veterinarians and USDA for understanding the physiology of the bird and how to properly execute a depopulation and disposal effort of that magnitude."

Penn State’s Animal Diagnostic Lab Helps Ensure Accurate Diagnoses
The College of Agricultural Sciences’ Animal Diagnostic Laboratory did its part during the 2022–2023 HPAI outbreak to rapidly test submitted samples for avian flu. With state funding the lab performed more than 16,600 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for avian influenza from February 2022 to May 2023, according to Megan Lighty, associate clinical professor and avian diagnostic and outreach veterinarian at the lab.

"In 'peacetime,' so to speak, a lot of our avian flu surveillance is serology based, where we're looking for antibodies," she explained. "But serology is really geared to detect low path avian flu. With high path AI, the birds get very sick and start dying quickly. They don't have time to develop antibodies, so we have to shift to molecular testing such as PCR."

That meant that some lab technicians who normally would conduct blood-based diagnostic testing had to train and become certified to do PCR tests.

"We've really learned to appreciate the value of cross-training our laboratory staff so that we can pivot if there is a disease outbreak," Lighty said.

Lighty, who served as the liaison between the Animal Diagnostic Lab and the HPAI incident command center, noted that additional funding appropriated to the lab by the state legislature to combat avian flu helped boost response and testing capacity.

"That funding allowed us to purchase additional supplies we needed for AI testing," she said. "It also helped the lab pay staff for overtime hours they were working. We purchased signage and personal protective equipment as we set up a separate workflow for sample drop-off, so clients coming from control zones didn't have to enter the building and risk bringing in pathogens. Some of the funds were used for continuing education for our faculty and staff to better prepare us for the future."

"We need to take the things that we've learned from this outbreak and apply them to future situations," Lighty said.

"This isn't over," she continued. "This will be an ongoing challenge and a continuous threat for the poultry industry. Disease preparedness, diagnostic testing, and outreach are important roles for the diagnostic lab, the college, and extension moving forward."

South Dakota State University / Extension

SDSU Veterinary Extension has been involved throughout the developments of avian influenza and its incursion into dairy cattle and other animals including:

• Published an article regarding biosecurity to prevent influenza infections in dairy farms: Avian Influenza Viruses in Dairy Cows: What is the role of biosecurity?
• Communicated regularly with:
  • South Dakota Animal Industry Board and South Dakota Department of Health following a dairy farm breaking with influenza virus in the state.
  • The owner of cats affected with the same influenza virus strain after they had observed death losses in farm cats and submitted them to a veterinary diagnostic laboratory, regarding risk factors for animal infections and the potential for influenza in people in close contact with affected animals. 
  • The American Association of Bovine Practitioners and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in order to have the most current information.
• Coordinated:
  • Health Department and SDSU communication with the owner of the affected dairy regarding illness resolution on the farm and the potential for workers to become affected with influenza through contact with infected cattle.
  • Communication between the state’s veterinary practitioners and the SDSU ADRDL regarding testing requirements put into place by USDA for movement of lactating cows across state lines.

University of Wisconsin – Madison

In response to the recent outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus in dairy cattle, the University of Wisconsin – Madison Division of Extension Dairy Program created the UW-Madison Extension HPAI Resource List. The continuously updated list provides information to dairy producers, industry workers, and the public focusing on the following:

• What is Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus?
• The Current Situation in Wisconsin
• Protecting animals from HPAI
• Protecting humans from HPAI
• Latest news about HPAI

Extension educators are closely monitoring all developments to share up-to-date information via the UW-Madison Extension HPAI Resource List. A news update on Monday, April 29, 2024 shared information about new mandatory testing of lactating cattle prior to movement across state lines but into effect by USDA APHIS. Information was shared with affected farmers through the Dairy Program Newsletter, media outlets, social media, and on a special TV interview with RFD-TV. The RFD-TV interview was shared on a live news broadcast, as well as online reaching 52 million homes. 

This is an evolving situation that needs to be watched closely and responded to appropriately as impacts on Wisconsin’s dairy farmers continue to change. Increasing knowledge about HPAI will help producers make informed decisions on reducing the risk of HPAI in their herds, thus being conscious of biosecurity. 

UW-Extension's Local Government Education Program offered an Avian Influenza webinar on March 25, 2024 because of the increasing risk of the virus killing commercial poultry flocks in communities across rural Wisconsin as potentially infected wild birds migrate back to Wisconsin in Spring. The webinar allowed local government officials across the state to learn about the deadly and fast moving disease, its past and potential future impacts on local commercial poultry operations and local economies, and what and how to deploy necessary mitigation measures for flock and worker health, as well as to protect the environment. This webinar was intended to prepare local government officials in advance of an outbreak. Evaluations are being distributed to participants. Overall, this webinar was intended to help mitigate the negative impacts of likely Avian Influenza outbreaks on communities across the state.