There is a chilling note to news that in the United States bird flu has leapt species to infect dairy cows for the first time. Up until now bird flu has seemed a few steps removed from the human health risk, albeit having a 50:50 mortality rate for the 850 people unfortunate enough to contracted it in the past 20 years.
But with it jumping to humanity’s main milk source, the risks not only to human health but to economic wellbeing are considerably sharper.
There is no evidence, yet, of US dairy farm workers having contracted the disease from their workplace charges.
But researchers are very aware the kindling to ignite another global pandemic is well placed. The virus has proven adept at mutating across species and would only require yet another mutation to have it leap into the unvaccinated human population with abandon.
While there is no human-to-human evidence of spread yet, the Spanish influenza of 1918 also developed from a bird flu virus that adapted to humans.
This is a well-placed concern, given how bird flu has already proven so capable of infecting multiple species, from US dairy cows to sub-Antarctic seal populations.
It could be easy to dismiss the US dairy outbreak as “too far away” to have an effect. The tyranny of New Zealand’s distance does help lower the risk of it spreading to our own dairy herd, if not our travel-loving human population.
But while we may not import US dairy cows, NZ receives multiple shore visits from migratory birds, whether it is the wandering albatross up from those sub-Antarctic seal locations, or the godwits on their annual migratory path from Alaska.
A plausible scenario is the iconic pied oyster catcher population becoming infected on the coast from visiting birds, migrating inland from along the South Island’s east coast to winter on farmland, and passing it onto the Canterbury dairy population.
The fact that Department of Conservation and Ministry for Primary Industries staff are working on vaccinations for our native bird species suggests the authorities’ expectation is not if bird flu arrives, but when.
This is playing out in an environment where the fiscal axe is being hefted across all government departments, including the MPI, which would be tasked with managing a disease response.
While bird flu is less likely to make its arrival via Auckland International Airport or the Port of Tauranga, there will still be a need to have skilled, knowledgeable staff capable of helping contain any discovery as quickly as possible. Frontline staff losses would cripple that capability at huge lingering economic cost.
The M bovis campaign is proving to be a successful but expensive effort in disease eradication, coming with a running price tag of about $800 million.
But compared to bird flu it was relatively straightforward, infecting only those dairy cows in contact with one another.
Bird flu has raged through 200 bird species and over 40 mammalian species around the globe, and its effect could be in degrees, ranging from the tragic loss of native birds here, to severe economic damage to the dairy sector, to another devastating global pandemic.
