H5N1 bird flu news thread

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Second US company recalls pet food as bird flu spreads to cats through tainted meat

As the bird flu outbreak continues gaining force in the US, a second company selling raw pet food issued a voluntary recall after cats from two different households in Oregon contracted H5N1 from the tainted meat earlier this month. Two more cats in different households in Washington state have tested positive for bird flu after eating the same brand of raw pet food nearly two weeks after the recall, officials announced on Wednesday. One cat was euthanized, while the other remains under veterinary care.

Two lots of the raw food, made by Wild Coast Raw, fall under the voluntary recall. It is not clear whether the new cases in Washington are linked to recalled lots or others. Since 2022 in the US, nearly 100 domestic cats have tested positive for bird flu, which can be fatal, and it may be possible for cats to transmit the virus to humans. On 6 February, Christine “Kiki” Knopp noticed one of her 11 cats was running a slight fever. Within days, two of her cats had to be euthanized, and a third was in an intensive care unit.

All of the cats that had eaten raw pet food would later test positive for bird flu. Only a male cat kept apart from the others and fed canned food stayed negative. Knopp is an artist in Portland, Oregon, who breeds and shows Cornish Rex cats. She has fed raw food to all but the male cat for years, and watched recent notices about tainted raw pet food carefully. She believed the food from Wild Coast was being tested for H5N1.

If Knopp had known, she would have “immediately” switched to canned food – a move she now recommends to all cat owners who were feeding raw food they bought or made on their own. “It is not safe,” she said. “Immediately: do not feed raw poultry or raw chicken, raw any table scraps, to cats currently – not even raw eggs.” Raw milk is similarly risky, since milk can contain enormous amounts of virus, and raw beef has also been found to harbor H5N1. “Especially right now, feeding raw food is just all risk,” said Steve Valeika, a small-animal veterinarian with a public health background.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... s-bird-flu

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New Biosensor Can Detect Airborne Bird Flu in Under 5 Minutes
by Leah Shaffer
March 3, 2025

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) As highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza continues to spread in the U.S., posing serious threats to dairy and poultry farms, both farmers and public health experts need better ways to monitor for infections, in real time, to mitigate and respond to outbreaks. Thanks to research from Washington University in St. Louis, which was published in a special issue of ACS Sensors on “breath sensing,” virus trackers have a way to monitor aerosol particles of H5N1.

To create their bird flu sensor, researchers in the lab of Rajan Chakrabarty, professor of energy, environmental, and chemical engineering in WashU's McKelvey School of Engineering, worked with electrochemical capacitive biosensors to improve the speed and sensitivity of virus and bacteria detection.

Their work is crucially timed as the avian virus has taken a dangerous turn over the past year to being transmitted via airborne particles to mammals, including humans. The virus has been proven deadly in cats, and there has been at least one case of a human death from H5N1.

“This biosensor is the first of its kind,” said Chakrabarty, speaking of the technology used to detect airborne virus and bacteria particles. Scientists have previously had to use slower detection methods with polymerase chain reaction DNA tools.

Chakrabarty noted that conventional test methods can take more than 10 hours, “too long to stop an outbreak.”

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1075505

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https://bsky.app/profile/angierasmussen ... t77gv5gc2y (thread)

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We’ve entered a forever war with bird flu

https://www.theverge.com/science/632605 ... h-bird-flu

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Bird flu virus mutating fast - and our vaccines may not be enough

By University of North Carolina at CharlotteMarch 22, 2025

H5N1 influenza is evolving rapidly, weakening the effectiveness of existing antibodies and increasing its potential threat to humans.

Scientists at UNC Charlotte and MIT used high-performance computational modeling to analyze thousands of viral protein-antibody interactions, revealing a decline in immune response effectiveness. Their research suggests that H5N1 mutations may soon enable human-to-human transmission, raising pandemic concerns. The virus has already spread among wild birds, poultry, cattle, and even farmworkers, emphasizing the need for swift vaccine development ...

https://scitechdaily.com/the-bird-flu-v ... be-enough/

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Bird Flu Hits World’s Biggest Wandering Albatross Colonies

March 23, 2025 at 2:49 PM GMT

A fast spreading form of bird flu is devastating colonies where almost half of the world’s wandering albatrosses breed on a remote island group halfway between South Africa and Antarctica.

High pathogenicity avian influenza, or HPAI, H5N1 virus has been confirmed on South Africa’s Marion Island after samples were shipped back to the mainland, the country’s environment department said in a statement on Sunday.

[...]

The wandering albatross has the largest wing-span of any bird and they are famed for following ships. There are thought to about 25,000 of them globally.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... eddit_wall

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Minnesota milk surveillance flags H5N1 in dairy herd

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influe ... dairy-herd

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A Geospatial Perspective Toward the Role of Wild Bird Migrations and Global Poultry Trade in the Spread of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1
by Mehak Jindal, Haley Stone, Samsung Lim, C. Raina MacIntyre
March 25, 2025

Abstract:

(GeoHealth) This study presents the interplay between wild bird migrations and global poultry trade in the unprecedented spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza, particularly the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b strain, across the world and diverse ecosystems from 2020 to 2023. We theorized the role of migratory birds in spreading pathogens as various wild bird species traverse major flyways between the northern and southern hemispheres. Simultaneously, we analyzed the global poultry trade data to assess its role in H5N1's anthropogenic spread, highlighting how human economic activities intersect with natural avian behaviors in disease dynamics. Lastly, we conducted spatial hotspot analysis to identify areas of significant clustering of H5N1 outbreak points over different bird families from 2003 to 2023. This approach provides a strong framework for identifying specific regions at higher risk for H5N1 outbreaks and upon which to further evaluate these patterns with targeted intervention studies and research into what is driving these patterns. Our findings indicate that both the poultry sector and wild bird migrations significantly contribute to global H5N1 transmission, which helps better understanding of H5N1 transmission mechanisms when combined with ecological, epidemiological, and socio-economic perspectives. The results are intended to inform policy-making and strategic planning in wildlife conservation and the poultry trade to improve public health and animal welfare globally.

Read more here: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.co ... GH001296

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Mexico confirms country’s first human case of bird flu in a 3-year-old girl

https://apnews.com/article/mexico-bird- ... 47a6a43479

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Bird flu, feared as a possible pandemic, poses growing risk to people as pathogen spreads, scientists warn

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bird-flu-r ... ranscript/

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Raw Food for Cats and Dogs Could be Harmful
by Emmet Fraizer
April 24, 2025

Introduction:

(The Nation) Log on to TikTok these days, and you might find a broad-shouldered mastiff gnawing on a raw lamb head for breakfast. Or a pure-bred Bengal cat enjoying an “affordable” meal of freeze-dried goat and quail yolk. Conversely, it could be a rescue dog dining on whole dried quail, blood sprinkles, and a rabbit head—or a chocolate lab named Bear, with a quarter of a million followers, who savors raw beef trachea, goat lung, beef eyeball, duck foot, chicken heads, buffalo chunk, goat kefir, and myoglobin.

Social media influencer pet owners posting gory, niche pet food video content to farm likes and comments don’t necessarily represent the average consumer of raw pet food. But their rise to the top of the TikTok algorithm has real-world effects, as influencers enter into lucrative partnerships with raw food companies, and companies in turn use pseudoscientific health claims to promote their products.

Additional extract:

A carnivore diet isn’t great for human health, despite what the Liver King would have you believe. And even when it’s your pet eating raw meat, humans are at risk: Raw-fed animals shed pathogens even when they don’t seem sick. In recent months, the dangers have increased for all species. In December of 2024, at least five cats in Oregon and Los Angeles died of bird flu after consuming packets of Northwest Naturals and Monarch Raw pet food. Agriculture departments in Washington and Oregon announced another recall in February after two cats died of bird flu found in Wild Coast’s boneless free-range chicken formula. In Colorado, 11 cats came down with the flu after being exposed to raw poultry or pet food, ten of whom died; the “prey-based” Savage Cat Food has been linked to bird flu there and in New York.

Both wild and domestic cats are especially vulnerable to bird flu, and the virus can penetrate far beyond the respiratory tract to cause seizures and hemorrhages. Research from the University of Maryland shows that about two-thirds of house cats infected with the current strain will die—and every new infection increases the possibility of the virus’s becoming more transmissible to humans.

Read more here: https://www.thenation.com/article/soci ... et-food/

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Tracing the Emergence and Spread of H5N1 in U.S Dairy Cattle
Summary author: Walter Beckwith
April 24, 2025

Entire article:

(Eurekalert) The spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in U.S. dairy cattle can be traced to a single spillover event from a wild bird, researchers report, raising concern over growing pandemic risks as the virus evolves and leaps between species. HPAI viruses pose serious threats to animal health, agriculture, and potentially human health due to their ability to cross species barriers. A specific strain, H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, has spread globally, infecting wild birds, poultry and, mammals – including a small number of humans – underscoring its pandemic potential. Notably, in 2024, this strain was detected in dairy cattle across multiple U.S. states, marking an unusual and concerning expansion into a previously uncommon host. Here, Thao-Quyen Nguyen and colleagues investigated how this H5N1 strain evolved and spread following its arrival in North America in late 2021. Nguyen et al. analyzed genetic data from over 100 virus variants that emerged through mixing with local, low-pathogenicity bird flu strains. By combining these data with newly sequenced genomes and outbreak information from infected U.S. dairy cattle, the authors discovered that the outbreak originated from a single spillover from an avian source – likely in mid-to-late 2023 in Texas – followed by several months of undetected cow-to-cow transmission. The movement of infected or presymptomatic dairy cattle facilitated the rapid spread of the virus from Texas to several other states, including North Carolina, Idaho, Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, and South Dakota. According to the findings, after the avian influenza virus was introduced into cattle, it not only persisted but also spread from cattle to other species, including poultry, raccoons, cats, and wild birds such as grackles, blackbirds, and pigeons. Moreover, genetic analysis revealed mutations associated with mammalian adaptation, some of which have already become fixed in the viral population. “Our study demonstrates that [influenza A virus] is a transboundary pathogen that requires coordination across regulatory agencies and between animal and public health organizations to improve the health of hosts and reduce pandemic risk,” Nguyen et al. write.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1081117

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Underage Workers, Millions of Dollars and Trucks Full of Dead Chickens — Inside the Business of Killing in Response to Bird Flu
by John McCracken
April 30, 2025

Introduction:

(Investigate Midwest) When a poultry farm tests positive for bird flu, the clock starts.

Within the first 72 hours, farmers start depopulating, an industry term for killing contaminated flocks.

Despite the sweltering heat inside the barns, hired workers wear gloves, face masks and other protective equipment and repetitively pick up flailing, sick chickens and place them into a metal container filled with carbon dioxide. In a few minutes, the chickens are dead.

In other cases, workers seal the barn doors and crank up the temperature, causing the birds to die from heat stroke, or flood the barn with a suffocating foam. In a few hours, most of the chickens are dead and workers begin to haul thousands, if not millions, of lifeless caracasses out to dump trucks.

The stench of death seeps into workers’ clothes, sweat and even the water they’re supposed to shower in.

Read more here: https://investigatemidwest.org/2025/04 ... rd-flu/

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