A two-month outbreak, a missing federal response and unmonitored workers have experts asking who is really watching for the next pandemic

For two months, a bird flu outbreak has moved quietly through a fur farm about an hour outside Salt Lake City, where thousands of mink are raised for their pelts. The public learned the details only this week, when ProPublica, using messages obtained under Utah’s public records law, revealed how the outbreak was handled and how little help arrived from Washington.

Now infectious disease experts say the episode raises an uncomfortable question about whether the Trump administration is ready to manage viruses with pandemic potential.

A State Veterinarian Left Waiting

Amanda Price, Utah’s state veterinarian, led the response at C&T Fenn Farms. When she sought assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, federal officials told her the agency did not regulate mink and had no vaccine approved for the animals, according to the messages.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spoke with staff at the Utah health department but never contacted Price, the outlet reported. The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Why Mink Worry Scientists

Mink are highly vulnerable to several viruses that also infect people, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Utah has been here 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 the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases concluded the animals likely caught the virus from infected workers.

In other countries that have faced similar bird flu outbreaks, governments ordered farms to kill their mink. Veterinarians told ProPublica the Utah owners should have done the same by now. Tom Peacock, an avian influenza researcher at the Pirbright Institute, told the outlet that culling typically happens fast in these situations and that the delay here was deeply troubling.

A fur trade representative, however, warned Price that depopulating the farm would wipe out the business and wound the broader industry.

Workers on the Front Line

The people most at risk are the ones who handle the animals every day. Despite CDC guidance calling for symptom monitoring, officials reportedly did not track the farm’s workers. ProPublica located two people who had worked there, and one had a red eye, a symptom the federal agency says should prompt testing.

Farm owner Chad Fenn told ProPublica the worker simply had dust in his eye and that the state health department did not recommend a test.

Anyone who remembers how essential workers fared during the COVID-19 pandemic will recognize the pattern: the people closest to the danger are often the last to be protected.

An Expert Sounds the Alarm on Secrecy

Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiology professor who directs the pandemic center at Brown University School of Public Health, said the sick mink are unlikely to unleash a wave of human infections, and she has seen no signs the virus is spreading. For most Americans with no contact with sick animals, she said, this need not be a top worry.

What troubles her more is the apparent lack of openness from officials. Keeping an outbreak quiet protects neither animals nor people, she argued, and it does not release the government from its duty to prevent a pandemic.

Her biggest fear is concrete. Exposed workers could get sick, and some could die, when a vaccine like those used in other countries might have shielded them. A larger threat would emerge if the bird flu virus combined with a human influenza strain, a risk she said grows each flu season as more viruses circulate. She acknowledged she cannot put odds on that outcome, which could be zero.

Less Oversight, Fewer Answers

Nuzzo said that during Trump’s second term, the federal government appears to be watching farms for dangerous viruses less closely than earlier administrations did. Shortly after Trump returned to office, his administration fired federal employees who had been responding to a bird flu outbreak among dairy cows.

She also noted that federal officials once held regular calls with outside disease experts, giving researchers a chance to push back on decisions and test ideas. Those calls no longer happen. Without them, she said, important developments can unfold out of public view, and government actions may escape the scrutiny they deserve.

For now, much of what the public knows about the Utah outbreak has come not from federal agencies but from a stack of public records, and that may be the most telling detail of all.

Source: The Guardian