Bird flu has been spreading for two months at a mink farm in Utah, and the response has drawn fresh scrutiny because federal and state officials still have not taken the kind of steps seen in other countries. Amanda Price, Utah’s state veterinarian, tried to get help from the US Department of Agriculture, but federal officials told her the USDA did not regulate mink farms and did not have a vaccine approved for mink.
That matters now because the farm is about an hour from Salt Lake City and raises thousands of mink for their fur, putting workers in close contact with animals that are highly susceptible to viruses that can also infect humans. Jennifer Nuzzo said on Saturday that she did not see any signals the virus was spreading, but she warned that the people most at risk are those exposed to sick animals. “No animal or human will be protected from the toll of this virus through secrecy,” she said, adding that the risk is greatest among people who have exposure to sick animals.
Price’s calls for help landed in a gap between agencies. CDC officials spoke with Utah health department staff, but did not communicate with her, even as the outbreak continued. In countries where similar outbreaks have happened, governments have ordered farms to kill their mink. Veterinarians told ProPublica the Utah farm owners should already have culled the animals, and Tom Peacock said depopulation typically happens quickly in such situations.
The concern is sharpened by what Utah has already lived through. During the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly 10,000 mink in Utah 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, while a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America said mink are very susceptible to infection with several viruses that also infect humans. Nuzzo said she was worried that workers exposed to the animals could get sick, and that the virus could infect humans and become a pandemic if it combined with an influenza virus.
Whether Utah orders culling or another fast control measure is the unresolved point. The outbreak has already shown how quickly a farm animal virus can force public health questions to the surface, and how little clarity there still is when the animals are mink.
