CDC badly wants to access private dairy farms to inspect and investigate — but no one’s inviting them.
The highly infectious strain of avian influenza recently found in cattle in several US states, and diagnosed in an individual farm worker, could be more widespread among people than reported, according to Bloomberg News.
Last week, photos emerged showing a farm worker in Texas suffered bleeding in his eyes, which when tested revealed a large presence of H5N1 virus.
While more people could already be infected, Bloomberg claims the CDC and USDA are unable to get a clearer picture of human infections because private dairy farms aren’t inviting federal investigators onto their properties.
“That threatens to impair federal officials’ response to an outbreak that many experts view as the biggest test for pandemic readiness systems since Covid-19,” claims Bloomberg.
One researcher with Stanford University, Abraar Karan, told Bloomberg it’s a “huge problem” farms are able to bar CDC officials from inspecting their businesses.
“The CDC is not able to go in and do the type of testing and investigative work they need to do,” Karan argued. “That’s a huge problem and it’s a blatant issue.”
Likewise, Northwest University professor and Rockefeller Foundation pathologist Sam Scarpino contended the agency must be able to conduct the surveillance because “We’re playing with fire.”
“We’re really not doing the surveillance to say that it’s not here,” Scarpino said.
“We’ve almost certainly missed human cases,” Scarpino added, referring to wastewater samples in Texas showing traces of H5N1.
However, investigators are unable to determine whether the H5N1 traces being found are from humans or animals.
Researchers testing the wastewater said “cow’s milk entering sewage systems is a likely explanation for those findings.”
“The real question we need to answer is: Are there thousands of flu cases we missed, or a handful?” Scarpino asks.
The Texas Department of State Health Services told Bloomberg they’d invite the CDC to come inspect farms, but “we have not found any dairy farms interested in participating in an epidemiological field study.”
Farms are reportedly reluctant to grant the CDC and USDA access because the “industry [is] heavily reliant on immigrant workers who are often leery of interacting with government officials and worried about losing income if they test positive,” claims Bloomberg.
But maybe private farms are skeptical or suspicious of the CDC’s credibility post-Covid, and don’t want their products and primary source of income to become the target of the next Plandemic.
If only the federal government was as eager to protect our nation’s borders from people potentially carrying infectious diseases as they are about invading farmers’ properties.
