A bird flu mink farm outbreak in Utah spread for two months at a farm about an hour from Salt Lake City that raises thousands of mink for their fur. State veterinarian Amanda Price handled the response and tried to get help from the USDA.
Federal officials told Price that the USDA did not regulate mink farms and did not have a vaccine approved for mink. The outbreak has prompted criticism of the government response, especially because officials handling animal disease outbreaks usually need a clear chain for decisions on containment, testing, and worker protection.
Jennifer Nuzzo on secrecy
On Saturday, Jennifer Nuzzo said the lack of transparency from government officials about the infections was very troubling. She said, “No animal or human will be protected from the toll of this virus through secrecy,” and added, “The risk is greatest among people who have exposure to sick animals.”
Nuzzo, an epidemiology professor and director of the pandemic center at Brown University School of Public Health, also said, “I cannot tell you what the probability of that is. It could be zero,” while adding that she did not see any signals that the virus is spreading. That combination leaves the practical worry unchanged for farm workers: the people most exposed to sick animals are the ones most directly in the path of the outbreak.
USDA, CDC and Utah response
CDC officials spoke with Utah health department staff but did not communicate with Price. During the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly 10,000 mink in Utah died from the coronavirus, and quarantines were implemented 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 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.
That history is why the current outbreak is being watched so closely. In other countries where similar outbreaks have occurred, governments have ordered farms to kill their mink. Veterinarians told ProPublica that the Utah farm owners should already have culled the mink, and a fur trade representative told Price that culling the mink at C&T Fenn Farms would kill the business and the industry.
C&T Fenn Farms and the next step
Tom Peacock, an avian influenza researcher at the Pirbright Institute, said that in such situations, depopulation, meaning culling the mink, typically happens quickly. The open question now is whether C&T Fenn Farms will remove the animals or contain the outbreak another way, after a response in Utah that has already exposed the gaps between animal-health officials, federal agencies, and the people trying to manage the farm.
