In a report published on October 21 in the American magazine Vanity Fairwe point out that three national groups of veterinarians complained to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack (the equivalent there of a federal Minister of Agriculture) to ask him to impose on employees of his ministry greater transparency and unrestricted access to farms for veterinarians.
The journalist mentions, without being able to name them, “at least five veterinarians” who claim to have been laid off by breeders who were also their employers, because they demanded more screening tests for H5N1 avian flu before accepting to decree that the breeding was safe.
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The associations emphasize the dual role of the Department of Agriculture, which is to ensure the health and safety of herds, but also to protect an industry which, in the United States, represents approximately $175 billion.
As of October 18, the number of farms where at least one case of avian flu in an animal had been identified stood at 324, in 14 states. There were also 26 workers diagnosed.
Without a national surveillance system or a clear vision of the extent of outbreaks of this virus, “we are repeating all the same mistakes” of the COVID pandemic, summarizes Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.
This journalistic investigation comes in a context where, since the very first alerts in the United States last March, infectious disease experts have warned that the absence of testing and monitoring is the best recipe for these scattered outbreaks to become an epidemic – and not an epidemic which would be transmitted only between cows, but which would be capable of being transmitted between humans.
Because the worst-case scenario with this H5N1 flu, over the three decades that we have been observing its evolution, would be that it ends up with a mutation that would make it capable of being transmitted between humans. Usually, a virus is only “adapted” to one animal species. But the more it spreads, the more the risks increase that through its random mutations, one will find one that makes it likely to take up permanent residence here.
A few generations ago, before air travel, such risk might have been contained to one region of the world. Today, while theA wise man occupies all ecological niches and is more or less in contact with all animal species, the risk of an “opportunistic” virus is much higher.
