The more H5N1 influenza continues to circulate in wild and domestic birds around the world, including here in North America, the more we have to be concerned about exposure of pets to H5N1 influenza through raw food diets. Recent documented infections in cats fed raw meat from infected birds have highlighted these concerns. For
H5N1 influenza has been widespread is US dairy cattle for close to a year, so you might wonder why a recent report of H5N1 in dairy cattle in Nevada is garnering extra attention. Well, it all comes down to the strain. TLDR:
Earlier today I wrote about a New York Times story about some interesting H5N1 flu transmission data from the US CDC that was posted briefly on Wednesday and was then quickly removed from the CDC website. The information suggested they’d identified cat-to-human and human-to-cat transmission of H5N1 flu in two separate households, both of
Cat-to-human or human-to-cat transmission of H5N1 influenza would be concerning but not too surprising.
Suppression of information by the US government would be concerning but not surprising given what’s going on at the moment.
But, did those occur?
The sharp eyes at the New York Times have raised concerns, because they spotted a CDC report
Addendum: The Oregon Veterinary Medical Association has indicated in a release that the cat discussed below was euthanized because of the severity of disease. That’s more consistent with the severe disease that’s usually reported but I think the discussion below still applies since this seems to have been an initial primary respiratory disease presentation. It
As H5N1 avian influenza continues to spread in wild birds and spills over into domestic birds and mammals of many kinds, we’re becoming more aware of the risks to domestic mammals and there are more questions about test selection and interpretation. Fortunately, testing for H5N1 influenza is relatively straightforward.
The FDA has issued a directive to pet food producers to ensure that their food safety plans address H5N1 influenza contamination issues. It’s in response to multiple cases of H5N1 avian influenza in domestic and wild cats fed contaminated raw diets containing poultry. Infection was fatal in many of these cats, and this also
TLDR: Nope.
These days I commonly get the question ”Does vaccination of dogs with available canine influenza vaccines protect them from H5N1 avian flu?” While we don’t have any hard data on this, we still have a pretty good idea of the answer.
One of the challenges with flu vaccination (in any
My post earlier this week about culling considerations for control of disease outbreaks in animals generated some good discussion and ideas (and a surprisingly small number of “you’re an idiot” emails). Although that post was focused primarily on culling in response to influenza outbreaks, we can also think about it little more broadly
The recent situation has raised more discussion about the role of mass culling in response to H5N1 influenza infection in domestic / captive birds. After H5N1 flu was identified on an ostrich farm in British Columbia, the CFIA ordered all 400 birds to be culled, but the owner is trying to find options to preserve
