Current:Home > FinanceUSDA efforts to solve the bird flu outbreak in cows are taking center stage in central Iowa-Angel Dreamer Wealth Society D1 Reviews & Insights
USDA efforts to solve the bird flu outbreak in cows are taking center stage in central Iowa
View Date:2024-12-23 19:54:47
AMES, Iowa (AP) — At first glance, it looks like an unassuming farm. Cows are scattered across fenced-in fields. A milking barn sits in the distance with a tractor parked alongside. But the people who work there are not farmers, and other buildings look more like what you’d find at a modern university than in a cow pasture.
Welcome to the National Animal Disease Center, a government research facility in Iowa where 43 scientists work with pigs, cows and other animals, pushing to solve the bird flu outbreak currently spreading through U.S. animals — and develop ways to stop it.
Particularly important is the testing of a cow vaccine designed to stop the continued spread of the virus — thereby, hopefully, reducing the risk that it will someday become a widespread disease in people.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture facility opened in 1961 in Ames, a college town about 45 minutes north of Des Moines. The center is located on a pastoral, 523-acre (212-hectare) site a couple of miles east of Ames’ low-slung downtown.
It’s a quiet place with a rich history. Through the years, researchers there developed vaccines against various diseases that endanger pigs and cattle, including hog cholera and brucellosis. And work there during the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009 — known at the time as “swine flu” — proved the virus was confined to the respiratory tract of pigs and that pork was safe to eat.
The center has the unusual resources and experience to do that kind of work, said Richard Webby, a prominent flu researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.
“That’s not a capacity that many places in the U.S. have,” said Webby, who has been collaborating with the Ames facility on the cow vaccine work.
The campus has 93 buildings, including a high-containment laboratory building whose exterior is reminiscent of a modern megachurch but inside features a series of compartmentalized corridors and rooms, some containing infected animals. That’s where scientists work with more dangerous germs, including the H5N1 bird flu. There’s also a building with three floors of offices that houses animal disease researchers as well as a testing center that is a “for animals” version of the CDC labs in Atlanta that identify rare (and sometimes scary) new human infections.
About 660 people work at the campus — roughly a third of them assigned to the animal disease center, which has a $38 million annual budget. They were already busy with a wide range of projects but grew even busier this year after the H5N1 bird flu unexpectedly jumped into U.S. dairy cows.
“It’s just amazing how people just dig down and make it work,” said Mark Ackermann, the center’s director.
The virus was first identified in 1959 and grew into a widespread and highly lethal menace to migratory birds and domesticated poultry. Meanwhile, the virus evolved, and in the past few years has been detected in a growing number of animals ranging from dogs and cats to sea lions and polar bears.
Despite the spread in different animals, scientists were still surprised this year when infections were suddenly detected in cows — specifically, in the udders and milk of dairy cows. It’s not unusual for bacteria to cause udder infections, but a flu virus?
“Typically we think of influenza as being a respiratory disease,” said Kaitlyn Sarlo Davila, a researcher at the Ames facility.
Much of the research on the disease has been conducted at a USDA poultry research center in Athens, Georgia, but the appearance of the virus in cows pulled the Ames center into the mix.
Amy Baker, a researcher who has won awards for her research on flu in pigs, is now testing a vaccine for cows. Preliminary results are expected soon, she said.
USDA spokesperson Shilo Weir called the work promising but early in development. There is not yet an approved bird flu vaccine being used at U.S. poultry farms, and Weir said that while poultry vaccines are being pursued, any such strategy would be challenging and would not be guaranteed to eliminate the virus.
Baker and other researchers also have been working on studies in which they try to see how the virus spreads between cows. That work is going on in the high-containment building, where scientists and animal caretakers don specialized respirators and other protective equipment.
The research exposed four yearling heifers to a virus-carrying mist and then squirted the virus into the teats and udders of two lactating cows. The first four cows got infected but had few symptoms. The second two got sicker — suffering diminished appetite, a drop in milk production and producing thick, yellowish milk.
The conclusion that the virus mainly spread through exposure to milk containing high levels of the virus — which could then spread through shared milking equipment or other means — was consistent with what health investigators understood to be going on. But it was important to do the work because it has sometimes been difficult to get complete information from dairy farms, Webby said.
“At best we had some good hunches about how the virus was circulating, but we didn’t really know,” he added.
USDA scientists are doing additional work, checking the blood of calves that drank raw milk for signs of infection.
A study conducted by the Iowa center and several universities concluded that the virus was likely circulating for months before it was officially reported in Texas in March.
The study also noted a new and very rare combination of genes in the bird flu virus that spilled over into the cows, and researchers are sorting out whether that enabled it to spread to cows, or among cows, said Tavis Anderson, who helped lead the work.
Either way, the researchers in Ames expect to be busy for years.
“Do they (cows) have their own unique influenzas? Can it go from a cow back into wild birds? Can it go from a cow into a human? Cow into a pig?” Anderson added. “Understanding those dynamics I think is the outstanding research question — or one of them.”
___
Stobbe reported from New York.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
veryGood! (9)
Related
- More than 150 pronghorns hit, killed on Colorado roads as animals sought shelter from snow
- Lionel Messi, Inter Miami face FC Dallas in Leagues Cup Round of 16: How to stream
- Why did MLB's most expensive team flop? New York Mets 'didn't have that magic'
- Police kill a burglary suspect in Lancaster after officers say he pointed a gun at them
- Jennifer Garner Details Navigating Grief 7 Months After Death of Her Dad William Garner
- England advances over Nigeria on penalty kicks despite James’ red card at the Women’s World Cup
- Minnesota 14-year-old arrested in shooting death of 12-year-old
- Barr says Trump prosecution is legitimate case and doesn't run afoul of the First Amendment
- Kentucky woman seeking abortion files lawsuit over state bans
- Grappling with new law, fearful Florida teachers tossing books, resellers say
Ranking
- Princess Kate makes rare public appearance after completing cancer chemo
- Livestreamer Kai Cenat charged after giveaway chaos at New York's Union Square Park
- Psychiatrist Pamela Buchbinder convicted a decade after plotting NYC sledgehammer attack
- Paris Hilton Shares Why She's Sliving Her Best Life With Husband Carter Reum
- 25 monkeys caught but more still missing after escape from research facility in SC
- Tory Lanez to be sentenced for shooting Megan Thee Stallion
- Storms spawning tornadoes in America's Heartland head for East Coast: Latest forecast
- Paying too much for auto insurance? 4 reasons to go over your budget now.
Recommendation
-
Guns smuggled from the US are blamed for a surge in killings on more Caribbean islands
-
Angus Cloud's Mom Insists Euphoria Actor Did Not Intend to End His Life
-
Bachelor Nation's Kaitlyn Bristowe and Jason Tartick Break Up After 4 Years Together
-
Attacks at US medical centers show why health care is one of the nation’s most violent fields
-
These Michael Kors’ Designer Handbags Are All Under $150 With an Extra 22% off for Singles’ Day
-
An Indigenous leader has inspired an Amazon city to grant personhood to an endangered river
-
What is the healthiest alcohol? It's tricky. Here are some low-calorie options to try.
-
Minnesota 14-year-old arrested in shooting death of 12-year-old