The USDA’s H5N1 Monitoring Program set the lofty goal of eradicating the virus from U.S. dairy herds. Lucas Sjostrom of the government affairs team at Edge Dairy Cooperative says the average producer shouldn’t feel much impact from the program.
“Unless, of course, their herd is positive, and they wouldn’t have found that before. That’s maybe good monitoring. Maybe catch things faster, and USDA has stated that their goal is to stamp this out. So, I can tell you, across our nine states, we have been asked to provide feedback, we’ll be providing feedback, and across our nine states, they’re kind of all the same as what I described. Doing it at the silo level is a problem. We turn over those milk silos at the processing plant fast, and so the traceback becomes more of a burden than necessary. Doing it at the milk truck level is a lot more samples, but maybe that’s faster, and then, doing it at the farm level is just probably impossible. Ultimately, it’s up to the states on how they want to do it and the percentage they want to get. And we’ll learn from these first six states as we go forward.”
While U.S. dairy farmers support the idea of eradicating H5N1, there are some concerns about how to do it.
“It’s a new endeavor for us, and I think what we’re most resistant to is just making sure that the ends and the means match up. What is the goal here? Okay, USDA wants to stamp this disease out. Everybody wants this out. Dairy farmers, our poultry industry, we would all love this disease not to be affecting us, but what’s the best and most effective way to do that? And I think that’s where we’re trying to help our processors and our farmers figure out what is the most effective way to get to that goal. Or, you know, is that the most reasonable goal?”
He doesn’t think a new administration in the White House will mean a lot of changes to the surveillance program.
“If there’s a vaccine coming soon, is this only going to be a short-term pilot, and so I’m sure USDA is weighing all that. We have a new administration coming in, but this is, I would say, very scientifically focused, and we’re not guessing that there will be much change with the administration change. However, that’s always possible. We want to preserve our foreign markets, and when we’re talking about tariffs and other things with other countries, how we talk about this and when we talk about it and why we talk about becomes more important. So, even that USDA is doing a surveillance program, we want to be supportive in helping them build the best thing they can because if they’re saying this is to preserve export markets, I hope dairy farmers realize whether you ship to the cheese plant down the road or one that’s shipping to Mexico every single day, this affects our milk price no matter who you are and where you are.”