If you’re looking for Raw Farm updates on their voluntary recall, follow their Instagram. They’ve since opened up a new dairy operation outside the HPAI affected zone and are likely to resume sales soon. No illnesses were reported, the risk is hypothetical. GetRawMilk.com has started tracking recalls, so you can let me know when a farm is recalled or released from recall. Update: they’re back, Raw Farm was released from recall.
Not to overshadow Governor Polis declaring a state of emergency in Colorado on July 5th, a second state is taking executive action against Bird Flu. Refer to the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s list of cattle farms Quarantined and Released from Quarantine.
Bird Flu in California
Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency regarding Bird Flu in California.
Read: the official proclamation on the Governor of California website.
There are no human cases originating from raw milk, only direct exposure to sick animals. Cows and humans recover from Bird Flu’s mild symptoms, including pink eye, after a few days.
HPAI has been detected in over 600 herds (archive), which speaks to the low-risk nature of this situation given just how little of a health impact there is on the ground.
Cats seem to get it the worst, with some data showing half of all infected cats not surviving the disease. Cats have died from Bird Flu, but it’s unclear whether these deaths were caused by consuming raw milk or by transmission from infected birds.
While the term “state of emergency” sounds intense, all that changed is a diversion of resources from the state-level to the county and local level to increase testing, monitoring, and provide workers with PPE. Farms were already being recalled. If a farm tests positive, their farm will be quarantined and released from quarantine once their tests come back negative.
The trending conspiratorial angle would be that pharmaceutical companies (in league with their ad money recipients) are spurring government, which continues to state the truth that Bird Flu is low-risk, in order to juice their lame stock prices with fear induced sales of their new product. If true, I welcome evidence (not interested political commentary or rumor-stroking no matter how tantalizing). Again, I don’t think it’s working, nor do I think it’s the end of raw milk.
Read: Biden administration has no current plans to authorize a bird flu vaccine for humans
What is going on?
61 total cases of Bird Flu in humans have been reported confirmed across seven states, including 34 reported human cases in California.
The effects of this disease are almost always mild. Both cattle and humans seem to heal up quickly, with few exceptions.
Technically, the disease could mutate to become highly transmissive and deadly. It’s just as likely to remain mild. Science has become so advanced in detection that public health is not just worried about real disease, but also hypothetical disease. Squaring what we can detect (or predict) and what people are willing to do about it is a work in progress, as we saw from 2020-2022.
This state of emergency simply means that resources from the State of California will be allowed to flow to local municipalities, when they would not in the absence of an emergency. These resources potentially include equipment, personnel, money, intelligence, and more.
From the California Governor’s Office:
This action comes as cases were detected in dairy cows on farms in Southern California, signaling the need to further expand monitoring and build on the coordinated statewide approach to contain and mitigate the spread of the virus. The virus has spread in 16 states among dairy cattle, following its first confirmed detection in Texas and Kansas in March 2024.
To date, no person-to-person spread of Bird Flu has been detected in California and nearly all infected individuals had exposure to infected cattle. California has already established the largest testing and monitoring system in the nation to respond to the outbreak.
This emergency proclamation will provide state and local agencies with additional flexibility around staffing, contracting, and other rules to support California’s evolving response.
Quote from Governor Gavin Newsom:
“This proclamation is a targeted action to ensure government agencies have the resources and flexibility they need to respond quickly to this outbreak. Building on California’s testing and monitoring system — the largest in the nation — we are committed to further protecting public health, supporting our agriculture industry, and ensuring that Californians have access to accurate, up-to-date information. While the risk to the public remains low, we will continue to take all necessary steps to prevent the spread of this virus.”
Testing will increase. Farms will be quarantined and released from quarantine based on testing.
This represents an inconvenience to consumers and various downtime costs to affected farmers. Make sure to follow your farms on social media keep in touch. This is not the end of the world for access to raw milk.
The state-level government is informing the public, encouraging people to be vigilant, to utilize resources allocated to prevent damage caused by Bird Flu, and not to panic. Various organized and independent media publishers will likely encourage people to panic, on two apparent sides, with one side overstating the risk and the other overstating the response.
Bird flu and raw milk
Most of the Bird Flu testing is conducted on animals, however milk may also be tested.
If a dairy cow is sickened by Bird Flu, the milk may contain whole or fragmented particles of Bird Flu. Since raw milk is ingested, this represents a potentially viable method of transmission and infection of people who may be susceptible. As such, public health institutions are putting the magnifying glass to raw milk as a possible vector.
There have been no confirmed cases of humans contracting Bird Flu from raw milk. There has been one suspected human case of transmission from raw milk (update: test came back negative). There have been zero cases of human-to-human Bird Flu transmission.
From what I can tell, health departments are going about this bug hunt objectively. Irrational social media hate directed at raw milk is mostly ghettoized on social media, but if your mind is engulfed in that world it’s easy to project that e-struggle onto officials. That’s not what the actual box checkers are doing, until proven otherwise.
Follow your farms on social media to receive their updates.
Raw milk sales faced local bans starting in the early 20th century after a century of recently-industrialized milk production. A few decades ago, it was reasonable enough to assume that legalization of raw milk may return us to a time of mass infant mortality. Now that raw milk sales have been legalized state-by-state, with more than 10 million consumers nationwide, we can recalibrate our risk assessment based on data. Comparing raw milk foodborne illness data with other foods
