Bird flu has spread for two months at a mink farm in Utah, and the state veterinarian who handled the response says she could not get the federal help she tried to secure. Amanda Price turned to the US Department of Agriculture as the outbreak moved through C&T Fenn Farms, about an hour from Salt Lake City, where thousands of mink are raised for their fur.
The detail that makes this outbreak stand out is not only the scale, but the silence around it. Federal officials told Price that they did not regulate mink or have a vaccine approved for the animal, while Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials spoke with Utah health department staff but did not communicate with her. That split left the person managing the outbreak on the farm without direct federal guidance, even as the infection continued to spread.
The concern is sharpened by what happened in Utah before. During the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly 10,000 mink in the state died from the coronavirus, and quarantines were imposed at nine farms. A report in Emerging Infectious Diseases said the virus was probably transmitted to the animals from infected workers, and a report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America said mink are highly susceptible to several viruses that also infect humans. That is why experts are watching exposed workers so closely now.
Jennifer Nuzzo said the lack of transparency from government officials about the infections was very troubling, and she warned that “no animal or human will be protected from the toll of this virus through secrecy.” She said the risk is greatest among people with exposure to sick animals and added that the government still has a responsibility to try to prevent a pandemic. At the same time, she said she did not see any signals that the virus is spreading, even as she described the scenario she feared most: workers becoming sick, and possibly dying, after contact with infected mink.
Other countries have ordered farms to kill their mink during similar outbreaks, and veterinarians told ProPublica that the Utah farm owners should already have culled the animals. Tom Peacock said depopulation in these situations typically happens quickly, which underscores how unusual the delay has been here. The report did not say whether the owners have culled the mink or whether any humans have been infected, leaving the most important next question unresolved: whether this outbreak will be contained on the farm or become the kind of gap in oversight that turns a local animal infection into a wider public health problem.
