Ranking Member Cassidy Urges Coordination and Transparency from Biden Admin in Avian Flu Response
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, urged President Biden to issue a plan detailing the administration’s research priorities related to the H5N1 influenza (Avian Flu) outbreak. Cassidy stressed the importance of coordination and clear communication in carrying out a successful public health response and assuaging public concerns about the spread and behavior of the virus.
“As president, it is your responsibility to ensure that all relevant departments and agencies are coordinating to prioritize and address key questions,” wrote Dr. Cassidy.
“While I have no doubt that scientists around the country are diligently working to try to answer these and other questions, your administration must communicate its research plans in a coordinated way,” continued Dr. Cassidy. “Failure to do so will jeopardize the public’s trust in your response, which could have severe unintended consequences on the health of the United States’ agriculture and food sectors.”
First identified in 1996, avian influenza has triggered multiple outbreaks globally among animals and humans. The current outbreak since 2021 has led to the deaths of hundreds of millions of domestic and wild birds worldwide and continues to spread to new mammal species. As of March 2024, avian influenza had been identified in at least 48 mammal species in 26 countries.
Spread of the virus among mammals increases risks that the virus could more easily infect and spread between humans. Last month, a dairy worker in Texas tested positive for avian influenza, the first American to contract this illness in the current outbreak. Cassidy raised additional concerns that avian influenza could have severe impacts on our nation’s food supply and called on the Biden administration to ensure all food on the market continues to be safe for Americans.
Read the full letter here or below.
Dear President Biden:
I write with growing concern about your administration’s response to the circulation of H5N1 influenza in animals. The ongoing outbreak has serious implications for both animal and human health, and the presentation of this virus among dairy cattle has left state and local officials, researchers, impacted industries, and the general public with significant outstanding questions. As president, it is your responsibility to ensure that all relevant departments and agencies are coordinating to prioritize and address key questions.
Over the past several decades, we have increasingly seen viruses behave in previously unknown ways. For example, two years ago, clade 2 mpox (then known as monkeypox) began circulating at a large scale in the United States, predominantly among men who have sex with men. During that outbreak, we saw widespread transmission through sexual contact, and infections presented differently in patients than typical mpox cases.[1] Similarly, we now know that viruses like Ebola can remain in the body dormant after initial infection.[2]
The current H5N1 outbreak similarly raises scientific questions that are key to helping impacted industries respond and members of the public have confidence that the risk to them remains low, as experts currently suggest. For instance, although the genetic sequence of the virus itself appears to be consistent with that which is circulating among wild birds, scientists still do not know for certain how the virus is transmitting between cows.[3] If the hypothesis that the virus is spreading via milking machines turns out to be correct, that could explain why the virus appears to be concentrating in dairy cattle mammary glands. However, questions still remain about why the virus is causing symptoms in dairy cattle when other influenza viruses previously have not.[4]
Additionally, while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to assert that pasteurization effectively inactivates the virus based on its established testing protocols, results published by researchers using other methodologies have raised public concern about the safety of commercially available milk.[5] Providing clarity about the efficacy of long-standing safety measures is essential to continue to build trust in our food safety preparedness measures. FDA’s communications have indicated that their testing thus far shows no live virus in the milk supply; however, it is important to continue to provide these updates and if FDA does make any changes to its testing strategy, it is transparent around the reasoning behind this.
Further, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials have cited outstanding scientific questions about whether wastewater surveillance could serve as an effective surveillance tool in this outbreak. Yet at the same time, academic and private sector researchers have identified evidence of spikes in H5N1 in wastewater treatment facilities, which in some jurisdictions include agricultural waste.[6] In previous responses, such as the identification of a polio case in New York in 2022, CDC supported wastewater surveillance in some surrounding counties but took several months to expand further to other jurisdictions.[7] If wastewater surveillance can provide insight into whether any animal or human cases are going undetected, we do not have time to waste.
While I have no doubt that scientists around the country are diligently working to try to answer these and other questions, your administration must communicate its research plans in a coordinated way. Failure to do so will jeopardize the public’s trust in your response, which could have severe unintended consequences on the health of the United States’ agriculture and food sectors. Therefore, I call on you to swiftly publish a prioritized list of research activities, including target timelines for generating results and communicating findings to the public. I also ask that you make all relevant data and methodologies available to nonfederal scientists in an appropriate manner for validation.
I look forward to hearing from you on this matter.
For all news and updates from HELP Republicans, visit our website or Twitter at @GOPHELP. Click here to unsubscribe.
