#dairy cattle genetics

[bovineblogger]

what is ur favorite bull-related fact

this is less of a happy favorite and more of a thing i think about CONSTANTLY

according to professor chad dechow, the employment associate professor of dairy cattle genetics at pennsylvanian state university, most dairy cows in the us are descended from just two bulls!!!

their names are Round Oak Rag Apple Elevation and Pawnee Farm Arlinda Chief. .. yea

not only is this sure bad for the gene pool, chief actually ended up carrying a gene that caused a lot of spontaneous abortions in cows! so you can imagine the impact that had on his daughters.

[serpentface]

A kulustaig bull, the distinctive cattle landrace of the highlands.

Kulustaig have striking differences to other native cattle found across the Imperial Wardi claimed territory. Their aurochs ancestors were domesticated in a separate event from those found south of the Inner Seaways, and the broader cattle population kulustaig derived from may have trace bison genetics. The progenitors of this landrace were brought south across the Viper seaway by the ancestors of the contemporary Hill Tribes, and were gradually shaped into the kulustaig in adaption to the high altitudes, mild but dry summers, and cool/snowy wet seasons.

These cattle are mid-sized and stocky in build with large, broad faces, most distinguished by curly manes and 'beards' and thick, V-shaped horns. Genetically undiluted kulustaig are almost ubiquitously black, white, and/or gray, though breeding with other cattle has introduced a greater variety of coloration in contemporary stocks.

They are adapted to higher altitudes, having larger hearts and a bigger lung capacity than comparable lowland breeds, and grow thick, curly winter coats that allow for superior resistance to seasonally cooler temperatures. They can maintain condition on less food and lower-nutrition grasses than the average cattle, and are excellent instinctive foragers. This particular quality makes them attractive for crossbreeding efforts with cattle stock of the dry scrublands in the south of Imperial Wardin, though most of their other traits are highly unfavorable for hot, low altitude environments, and scrub-kulustaig hybrids with idealized traits are rare (and highly sought after as studs).

These are all-purpose cattle that can adequately fulfill roles as meat, draft, and dairy animals, though the latter role has the most importance in day to day life, and they show the most selection for milk production (though are not as high-yield as pure dairy breeds). Their meat is mostly lean and somewhat gamey, as they rely more on thick winter coats than fat stores to manage cold, and the vast majority subsist entirely on wild grasses and forage.

Most kulustaig have fairly calm, gentle temperaments, and accommodate well to human handling (it is not uncommon for cows and geldings to be passively ridden by herders otherwise traveling on foot). Their herds have strong, well defined, and stable dominance hierarchy structures, which reduces actual fighting and lends to them being more easily managed by their human herders. In most traditions, the dominant female in each herd is regarded as blessed by and belonging to the agricultural goddess Od, and will not be milked or slaughtered (this untouchable status is often maintained even if the cow's rank in the hierarchy is displaced, though traditions vary).

Bulls are almost ubiquitously given personal names by their owners (the honor often belonging to a family or clan's matriarch, who is generally considered the owner of the herd and other familial assets), while other traditions vary between just the bulls and dominant cows, personal favorites, or entire herds receiving names.

These cattle are of tremendous importance to the peoples of the highlands (particularly tribes and/or individual clans living above the river valleys, who fundamentally rely upon them for subsistence). They provide much of the meat and dairy that the core diet revolves around, and are the greatest measure of wealth within the highlands. Non-native cattle can be commonly found in parts of the highlands in the contemporary (and may be bred in to impart unique qualities to established stock, such as improved milk production or fattier meat), but kulustaig are typically prized above all the rest. These cattle are often a source of great pride for individual clans, and one of few agreed upon markers of shared identity and pride for all of the collective Hill Tribes.

Cattle raiding is a near-ubiquitous practice (both as a practical resource acquisition, and a less immediately lethal method of settling larger disputes than open warfare), and most cattle will be branded with a mark identifying their owning clan as a method of dissuading theft (often futile, particularly given cattle marked as belonging to certain wealthy clans may be especially prized). Nose rings are commonly used to assist in the handling of bulls, but have secondary protective functions that lend to their common use in even the most docile of cattle. Rings are usually blessed or have spells woven into their making as a supernatural barrier against theft, or against malicious (or at least devious) mountain spirits such as tiirgranul (who take pleasure in frightening cattle (and their herders) and are known to cause stampedes) or wildfolk (who are known to sometimes steal or curse cattle when offended, or just bored).

The word kulustaig derives from the common word 'taig'/'taigr', which refers to cattle in the contemporary languages of both the Hill Tribes and Finns, and the 'kul' root (heavily antiquated and not used in contemporary speech, most commonly recognizable in the name of the kulys plant), which has connotations of hardiness/robust qualities. The name would have derived from complimentary descriptions of the animals as 'the best and most robust of cattle'.

[mindblowingscience]

When Canadian dairy farmer Ben Loewith's calves are born next spring, they will be among the first in the world to be bred with a specific environmental goal: burping less methane. In June, Loewith, a third-generation farmer in Lynden, Ont., started artificially inseminating 107 cows and heifers with the first-to-market bull semen with a low-methane genetic trait. "Selectively breeding for lower emissions, as long as we're not sacrificing other traits, seems like an easy win," Loewith said. The arrival of commercially available genetics to produce dairy cattle that emit less methane could help reduce one of the biggest sources of the potent greenhouse gas, scientists and cattle industry experts say.

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[veganagenda]

🐄

if you want to get very quickly and efficiently radicalized against the dairy industry, search the name of any dairy breed and read a cattle farming organization's article on them to see what they have to say.

once you notice it, the language they use to talk about living animals is sickening.

here are some from a cattle website's article on the Holstein breed, known famously as one of the 'highest producing' dairy cow breeds:

off to a great start - this article quietly walks around the fact that cows' lifespans are irrelevant to this topic and they should only technically be measured by the years they spend being 'productive' to the dairy industry. (because they know they won't live any longer than that, anyway.)

notice how these animals are reduced to mere numbers and statistics - how many pounds of milk, butterfat and 'protein' they can 'produce' per year. notice the fact that the dairy industry has historically had nothing but a vested interest in testing and pushing these numbers as far as they can go, beyond what is naturally biologically feasible - even demanding testing programs and constant genetic investigation to do so.

the implication that these animals can 'adapt' to farming situations they are forced into. the advertisement of these animals as being fully 'adaptable' to whichever method of explotation is chosen for them, including 'intensive farming.' think about how animals live in the wild for a moment. think about what 'intensive farming' entails. what animal could possibly 'adjust' to that?

furthermore, when these animals encounter heat stress and disease as a result of being put in an unsuitable environment, the only thing worth commenting on is their 'reduced production capacity.' no mention of their distress or wellbeing beyond that.

notice how factors that could be considered biologically unnatural, such as rapid growth and early maturity, are celebrated here, only for their benefit to the process of the dairy industry's purposes for calves.

notice how this article describes them as overwhelmingly easy to 'handle' - livestock farmers have little to no patience with 'misbehaving' animals, who exhibit 'difficult' behaviours. this article also offers the assurance that these animals are 'resistant to stress' - since it knows fully well that these cows will be encountering highly stressful environments in the dairy production industry.

noting that they exhibit herd bonds is as close as this article gets at any point to showing any kind of interest in them as what they actually are - living animals. this is the sole instance of that.

of course, in the dairy industry you should naturally expect that any sentence starting with 'Holsteins are more than just a dairy breed...' should end with 'the animal also contribute to the meat supply.' these cows have no worth in this industry's eyes beyond their bodies - what they can produce, what we can consume -- what they can sell to us. all under the convenient pretense that these animals are doing a 'service' to us by 'contributing to our supplies.'

can you imagine if your biology textbook suddenly started describing the quality, the texture, the 'fattening sectors' and 'fine fibres' of meat that compose the animals you were reading about?

and here we have one of the most horrifying sentences I've ever read:

it's self-confessional - the dairy industry is the meat industry, because dairy farming creates the 'byproduct' of useless male calves. so even under dairy circumstances, cows are still bred with beef breeds so that when they're forcefully impregnated, they can give birth to tastier babies.

the way it says all of this through pure implication is absolutely insidious.

and of course, on its final note, this article once again offers merit to these cows purely based on their milk productivity - their 'unexcelled production,' the 'greater income' they offer to the industry weighed against how much it costs to care for them. the obsession with their genetic 'qualities' goes far beyond disturbing here. their sperm, even frozen embryos are sold and exported as 'products' all around the world. just imagine what that looks like for a moment - what that requires. what a horrifying thing to do to an animal.

and how typical is it of the dairy industry to pretend that this is being done in the name of 'improving foreign food supplies' in the very same breath as celebrating how it also improves 'dairy producer incomes'? how convenient is it that the fabricated, false pretense of global necessity for dairy and meat products just so happens to make those industries one of the wealthiest on the planet?

how can anyone write or read an article like this and not instantly come to realize what kind of an abusive, exploitative, and downright dystopian system they are participating in? for the animals born and trapped within this industry, and for all the other living creatures subsequentally affected by this industry's neverending drive to increase its own profits, this is man-made, capitalistic hell in its purest form.

[horsesarecreatures]

Are we still breeding or are we just multiplying?

At the VZAP general meeting, the agricultural scientist Andreas Perner gave an interesting lecture on current problems in purebred Arabian breeding, which we used as an opportunity for the following interview. This is about undesirable developments in Arabian breeding, which have arisen primarily through specialization and selection on individual characteristics, and he sees parallels in cattle breeding where the changes are scientifically substantiated.

IN THE FOCUS: Mr. Perner, in your presentation at the VZAP general meeting you pointed out some parallels that exist between cattle and horse breeding. Why should we concern ourselves with cattle when we are actually interested in horses?

Andreas Perner: Because there are numerous parallels. The primitive cattle were characterized by an enormous chest cavity with plenty of space for the organs, relatively fine legs and a pelvic shape with a high sacrum so that birth could proceed quickly. Through breeding selection, a major change in this appearance has taken place over the last 100 years, including extreme specialization in beef and dairy cattle. Since cows as farm animals have long been the focus of science, one also has easy access to data, e.g. milk yield, slaughter weight, but also bone measurements, etc., which can also be used to document such changes. In animal breeding, a distinction is made between two constitution types: the asthenic and the athletic. The representatives of the Holstein cattle, a highly specialized breed of dairy cattle, today almost exclusively belong to the asthenic constitutional type: large, tall and narrow, i.e. less space in the chest for the organs, rather poor feed conversion, etc. Male calves of this breed are so weak in the muscle development that they no longer have any economic (slaughter) value. Before this extreme specialization in milk production, this breed corresponded to a dual-purpose cattle (milk and meat) and thus more of the athletic constitution type, which has become very rare today. One can definitely draw parallels here with Arabian breeding, where the Arabian show horse was bred through specialization – and became also an asthenic, tall, long-legged, with little depth to the trunk. And among Arabians, too, the athlete, the medium-sized, broad, deep-rumped Arabian of the “old type” who is also a good feed converter, is becoming increasingly rare. From a population genetic point of view, this is a major catastrophe and countermeasures must be taken.

IN THE FOCUS: If we ignore the outside appearance, i.e. the conformation – are there any other changes that have occurred as a result of this specialization?

A. P.: In the last 30-40 years, dairy cattle have increasingly been bred for maximum performance (milk production) in the young animals, i.e. there has been conscious selection for early maturity. This has resulted in serious changes in the animals: through selection for early maturity, the useful life has been extremely shortened due to high susceptibility to disease and fertility problems – the latter is the main cause of loss in cattle breeding. This can also be proven with figures: In Germany today a cow has an average of 2.4 calves, but biologically it can have 14-15 calves. The “useful life” of cows is now at an all-time low. The selection for early maturity also has an impact on the quality of the claws: the early maturing animals need claw care three times a year, because the claws are soft and grow very quickly. In contrast, slow, long-lasting growth – i.e. late maturity – ensures healthy development of the entire organism and a long lifespan. Late-maturing cattle only need hoof care once a year, sometimes only every two years, because they have extremely good, strong hoof horn. All this can also be transferred to the horse, because the horse’s hoof horn is also of better quality in late-maturing animals. This all depends on the high quality of the connective tissue. If you breed late-maturing animals, they often look underdeveloped when they are young and breeders often do not recognize their true quality. It is also a feature of breeding for longevity that it produces healthier animals, which statistically incur significantly less veterinary costs (i.e. only a quarter of the costs) in cattle breeding. Here, too, the parallels to horse breeding seem clear to me: the late-maturing types have no chance at shows in the junior classes, which is why show horse breeding promotes the early-maturing type. Late maturing horses often look like “ugly ducklings”, but often they only become “beautiful swans” when they are 6 years old or older. Egyptian breeding has had this problem for a long time, which is why you see fewer and fewer Egyptians at international shows or they have their own shows where they are not in competition with the early-maturing “show horses”.

IN THE FOCUS: When you say that a late-maturing horse is characterized by long-term growth, which then ensures healthy development of the entire organism and a long lifespan, the Russians come to mind. But it is precisely these that are tested on the racetrack very early, as early as two-year-olds. Isn’t that a contradiction?

A. P.: As far as I know, the two-year-old horses are prepared very carefully for the racetrack and the trainers make sure that they are not overstrained. The horses also have time to develop further – they are encouraged to exercise without being overstrained. As a result, they develop better, become wider in the chest, more muscular overall, the entire organism becomes stronger, etc. But ultimately what matters is: How old do the horses get in good health – and therefore without major veterinary costs? And in the case of breeding animals there is also the question: How good is their fertility? There are Russian stallions with racetrack careers who are still mating naturally at the age of 28, mares who still have foals at well over 20 years of age, and the Arabian mare Nefta in Pompadour, France, had one foal every year between 1975 and 1995, i.e. 21 foals in total! I don’t know of any such examples from show horse breeding without the use of embryo transfer (but I’m happy to be informed!). In warmblood breeding you can see what selection for early-maturity does, especially with show jumping horses, the horses often have a nerve cut at 8 to 9 years of age, then you have two more years of use, so to speak, and then they go to the slaughterhouse. Or think of the hypermobility of dressage horses, which have weak connective tissue and the resulting weakness of the joints, capsules and ligaments as well as the tendons and muscles. That cannot be the breeding goal.

Any selection that is not also focused on fitness and longevity or long-term performance automatically causes these characteristics to deteriorate.

IN THE FOCUS: To what extent have modern selection methods influenced the development of specialization?

A. P.: Specialization in cattle has been driven forward in the last 10 years by genomic breeding value estimation, which has now also found its way into horse breeding. For this method, the entire genome had to be sequenced and all performance parameters were then assigned to specific gene loci. Then, using complicated calculations, one could get an estimate of what performance the animal in question will perform in the future. In this way, it was possible for a young cow to achieve a milk production of over 40 kg per day, but the animals are no longer physiologically able to absorb enough nutrients to be able to achieve this output at all! As a result, over 90% of young cows end up with severe organ damage in the slaughterhouse. This means that the animals can endure it for a certain amount of time, mobilize all their body reserves but at some point their metabolism switches off and liver damage occurs, which ultimately leads to death. Part of the problem is that selection according to the wrong parameters took place. Instead of taking “longevity” and “health” into account, they only selected for “milk production”. A lot of breeding knowledge is also lost due to the convenient catalogue selection. The people who are in charge of cattle breeding today only use the preliminary breeding value or the genomic value for planning the matings. We are not quite there yet in horse breeding and especially not in Arabian horse breeding. But here too, a lot of breeding knowledge has been lost in recent years!

IN THE FOCUS: How can you avoid such a development in horse breeding as you have outlined for cattle breeding?

A. P.: In our association “European Association for Natural Cattle Breeding” we have selected cow families that have proven to be long-lived over several generations and in which the animals have produced over 100,000 litres of milk in the last 3 to 4 generations. We buy bulls from these cows. We have also inseminated such cows with semen from bulls that lived 30 or 40 years ago, and we now have the first 200 daughters of this F1 generation of the appropriate age. What’s exciting is that the animals produce almost as much milk as their “high-performance relatives”, but are significantly healthier! The question now is: How to continue breeding with the F1 generation – this requires a lot of breeding experience and knowledge. But this is exactly what young farmers are missing. In horse breeding we have the same problem, where the most diverse bloodlines are crossed together and due to Mendel’s rules the appearance then splits in all directions in the F2 generation, and top horses that cost a lot of money produce maximum average offspring, as can be seen from the example of the gelding Agnat (pedigree see AP 2-22). That’s why we offer information in our association on the topic: How do you have to breed in order to achieve a high level of heredity reliability? To do this you have to use the old breeding methods, i.e. line breeding, occasional inbreeding, always working with blood connection. Then I don’t have the problem of anything splitting.

IN THE FOCUS: Let’s stay with Arabian breeding: What are the breed-typical characteristics that you should select for?

A. P.: Breeding means selecting. That doesn’t mean that the horses that are not suitable for breeding go to the slaughterhouse. But you have to decide which horses go into breeding based on which characteristics and which don’t. Those that do not go into breeding should still have enough quality that they can survive in their respective market segment (riding horses, show horses, racing horses). Characteristics typical of Arabians that need to be maintained are a hard constitution, suitability for long-term performance, high age, high fertility, good feed conversion, lively but benign temperament, sociability and people-oriented nature. The suitability for long-term performance is due, among other things, to the fact that the Arabian has the most haemoglobin per litre of blood (compared to warm-blooded and cold-blooded horses). Haemoglobin is responsible for supplying oxygen to the muscles, and it is therefore important that the Arabian can also mobilize the haemoglobin reserves in the body most efficiently at the same time. In this context there is also a high regenerative capacity. All of this is deeply anchored genetically, but if you don’t pay attention to these characteristics, i.e. if you don’t select for them, then these characteristics are lost within few generations. In animal breeding we speak of genotype-environment interaction, i.e. if I decrease the selection for certain characteristics, then these are gradually (and unnoticed) lost. The lifespan of Arabians is often 25 years, and horses over 30 are not uncommon. Regarding fertility, there are examples from the state stud farms where mares had 15 to 20 foals and demonstrated high fertility into old age. In addition, the Arabian horse has the highest milk yield (in grams) per kg live weight, which is also a sign of good feed conversion and efficiency. In Tersk Stud, milk production is used as a selection criterion because they don’t want mothers who don’t produce enough milk.

IN THE FOCUS: Which other results from constitutional research on cattle can be transferred to horses or the Arabian horse?

A. P.: A whole series of points come to mind: we have already covered some of the constitutional types and early maturity/late maturity, plus there is sexual dimorphism, i.e. the difference between male and female animals, breeding rules, breeding methods, the importance of mare families, the selection for size and the effects of show breeding, which also occurs with cattle!

The more masculine the male animals are in their appearance, the more feminine are their female offspring.

Sexual dimorphism is a true secondary sexual characteristic caused by different hormone constellations between the sexes. These sex hormones are produced in the adrenal cortex of stallions and mares. In addition, testosterone is produced in the testicles of stallions and estrogens are produced in the ovaries of mares. One such secondary sexual characteristic is, for example, the “stallion neck or crest”. If we now breed horses where stallions and mares look the same, where there is no longer any visible difference between the sexes – what happens on the hormonal level? The natural hormonal balance shifts, testosterone decreases, and the stallion’s neck disappears. In the long term, however, we are selecting against fertility, i.e. fertility will deteriorate! That’s also what you hear more and more often – behind closed doors: stallions have poor semen quality and mares are becoming increasingly difficult to conceive – you often have to use all the tricks of modern reproductive technology to get the animals pregnant at all. By the way, there is an old animal breeding law that says: “The more masculine the male animals are in their appearance, the more feminine their female offspring are.”

IN THE FOCUS: Breeding is a very complex matter, as we can see. What breeding principles can you give to a “young breeder”?

A. P.: Yes, what have we learned for breeding from all this research?

Never massively select for individual traits if you don’t understand the whole thing. This is going to shit. I would like to cite one of the most significant experiments in the history of animal breeding here: In the 1950s, the Russian biologist Dimitri Belyayev and his colleagues began to capture wild silver foxes, select them for tameness and repeatedly breed the animals selected according to this criterion with each other. The aim was to recreate domestication (becoming pets) in an experiment. So what happened? Already after the 3rd generation, serious changes occurred in the phenotype (external appearance): change in fur color, lop-eared ears, curly tails, shortening of the extremities, shortening of the upper and lower jaw, change in the texture of the fur, change in torso length, etc. There are a number of hypotheses to explain this phenomenon, but explaining them here would go too far. It is important to know that only a small part of the entire genome is activated; the rest are so-called “sleeping genes”. Environmental influences or selection pressure from outside (= breeding) do not change the genetic material itself, but rather the intensity with which certain parts of it are read and converted into molecules such as hormones. The conclusion for the breeder remains: selection for one characteristic ultimately changes entire complexes of characteristics!!!

Any selection that is not also aimed at fitness and longevity or long-term performance automatically causes these characteristics to deteriorate. As already mentioned at the beginning, the physiological basis for longevity and long-term performance is slow, long-lasting growth (=late maturity). Opposite to this is the complex of characteristics of “early maturity”, i.e. fast, short growth, high and intensive performance at a young age and the associated rapid aging. Research on cattle has shown that intensive selection for early and high milk production of the animals dramatically reduces their useful life. Before the animals are even fully grown (with 4 calves), a very high percentage of dairy cows have to leave the stable due to illness. These early-mature animals are physiologically incapable of maintaining this performance. On the other hand, late-maturing animals begin with medium performance, develop slowly and only achieve high and highest performance when they are fully grown. The organism with all its metabolic processes is then well “trained”, connective tissue, cartilage, joints, tendons, ligaments and claws are of high quality (because they have grown slowly) and the animals produce well into old age without any health problems. Everything that has just been said also applies in reverse to horse breeding. The rapid success pushes breeding towards early maturity with devastating consequences for the horses and ultimately for the horse owner.

Function determines form. I have to think about what breeding goal do I have? If I want to breed a riding horse, it needs certain riding horse points and it has to be ridden so that these can be checked. If I want to breed a racehorse, it has to be fast – it is this function (speed) that dictates the form. But if I want to breed a show horse, it has to fit into a conformation template that was developed by some people (judges). So here the form comes first, and the horse is bred to adapt to this form, which is fundamentally wrong.

IN THE FOCUS: There are different breeding methods to achieve your breeding goal. Could you briefly explain to us what these are?

A. P.: I actually come from a generation before population genetics. My grandfather had nothing to do with these theoretical considerations. But these people still developed different breeding methods based on their experience – and these are still valid today. The breeding methods commonly used for the Arabian horse are:

Line breeding – this means that we find a (minor) relationship on both the father’s and mother’s side, so we bring together related genes, so to speak, from breeding animals that correspond to our breeding goals and are selected as best as possible. Because of the slight relationship, I have a high degree of certainty that the next generation will be as good as or better than the parent generation.

We talk about inbreeding when you have outstanding breeding animals and you want to consolidate or increase this gene pool through breeding close relatives. Of course, inbreeding is only possible if the animal is free of any genetic defects. Inbreeding not only solidifies the good sides, but also the hereditary defects or undesirable traits and brings them forward. Two recessive genes can appear homozygous, i.e. monozygotic, through inbreeding. If the genetic makeup then contains a genetic defect, this genetic defect is present in a monozygotic form and it comes into play (e.g. CA, SCID). How close the inbreeding can be is a matter of debate. Basically, a generation postponement is always good. Before it was possible to test for hereditary defects using genetic tests, father-daughter matings were made – if the father was a hidden (recessive) carrier of a hereditary defect, this would come to light. Today’s genetic tests can save you from having dead or deformed foals. In any case, the use of inbreeding must be embedded in a breeding plan and strict selection must take place!

“Unplanned mating” – here the nice stallion around the corner or the super show crack is used without much consideration as to how well he suits the mare and what effects this has. Let’s take Agnat’s example again: His sire Empire was bronze champion at the European Championships as a junior and in the top ten at the World Championships. Grandfather Enzo was US National Champion, his grandmother Emira was All Nations Cup Champion, his other grandfather QR Marc was World Champion, and Kwestura was also World Champion and the most expensive horse at a Polish auction. His pedigree really shows the “Who’s Who” of show horse breeding and yet the combination of all these illustrious names resulted in a completely ordinary horse. So what happened there? It’s simple: In this pedigree everything is mixed together and then Mendel’s splitting rule kicks in and it splits in all directions in the F2 generation. As a consequence, the major show horse breeders then switch to embryo transfer, producing embryos from different sires, e.g. B. 10 foals, 9 of the resulting foals do not meet the requirements of a show horse and are sold cheaply, and the one that meets expectations goes into the show. But the fact that 9 foals do not meet the breeding standard is kept quiet. This is “trial and error” and has nothing to do with “breeding”. That’s why I am an absolute opponent of these methods.

Outcross – how an outcross works properly in terms of breeding is generally not known to many. So here’s an example: the stallion Kurier, bred at the Khrenovoje stud farm, a stud farm that was known for its extreme racing performance breeding. The damline is Russian, the outcross comes through the stallion Egis from Poland, a Derby winner of which the Russians have hoped to get not only a blood refreshment, but also the highest performance. In terms of breeding, the way it works now is that the stallion Egis gets the 5 best mares from the entire mare population to cover and his two or three best sons then go into breeding. Only these sons are then widely used in the broodmare band. Breeding means thinking in generations!

Displacement breeding – generally speaking, this involves replacing certain traits with others. In animal breeding, this is usually done by crossing with other breeds. In Arabian breeding this happens through a different type of horse within the breed. This can currently be seen in the Polish state stud farms, where show horse stallions, sometimes in the third generation, are being used indiscriminately on the thoroughly bred Polish mare base, so that Polish blood is being increasingly suppressed. What is currently happening there is a displacement crossing with show horses. In doing so, within 20 years they are ruining everything that has been built and consolidated over 150 years of breeding work.

Selection – in the large stud farms you could actually still select. Every year you have 50 or more foals and you select the 3 to 4 best ones, the rest go to the remonte, i.e. they become riding horses and are therefore taken from the breeding gene pool. But if, as a small private breeder, I only breed one foal in 10 years, the selection becomes difficult. The golden rule in animal breeding is: always double the good! Then you have a high degree of security in inheritance.

IN THE FOCUS: Mare families traditionally play a major role in horse breeding – and in Arabian breeding in particular. Why is that?

A. P.: Scientifically, this can be attributed to the so-called cytoplasmic inheritance. During fertilization, the stallion only contributes the sperm, and of that only the cell nucleus. The mare, however, contributes the egg cell with the cell nucleus and around it the cytoplasm with the cell organelles, and especially the mitochondria. The mitochondria are also carriers of genetic material and are responsible for the energy metabolism of the cells. These mitochondria are always passed on from mother to foal in the egg cell. A colt has the benefit of this, but cannot pass on this mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to its offspring. Only a filly can pass this on to the next generation. Therefore, the female line can be traced back into the past using mtDNA. Maternal performance lines such as Sabellina in Poland and Sapine in Russia are also known in Arabian horse breeding.

IN THE FOCUS: What advice would you give to a breeder who wants to buy a mare for breeding?

A. P.: A breeder should look at the damline of the mare in question. If possible, you should choose a mare from a damline that has undergone performance tests. Ask the breeder about the number of foals for the mother, grandmother, etc.? This gives an indication of fertility. If the last three generations consist of mares that meet all the criteria, you can also count on a resounding inheritance in the mare that you want to buy or with which you want to breed, i.e. a high degree of heredity security. If you buy a broodmare that has already had foals, you should ask whether this mare gave birth without any problems, did she become pregnant immediately, did she accept the foal? If we select better with regards to fertility, this will save a lot of unnecessary veterinary costs! The problem today is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain such data, because even studbooks usually only contain those foals that are born healthy and are considered “worthy of registration” by the breeder – the number of coverings that are used to become a mare pregnant, the number of resorptions, abortions, stillbirths, all of this is unfortunately no longer recorded today. Another problem is that most broodmares are kept by small breeders where they have no chance of having 10 or more foals because they are only bred once or twice in their lives. Based on today’s studbook data, it is not possible to determine whether a broodmare that only had two foals in 10 years was bred more often but did not produce a live foal, or was only used for breeding twice. And a good broodmare also has good milk production! In the large state stud farms in Poland and Russia, this was recorded as a selection criterion because it is also one of the good maternal qualities.

IN THE FOCUS: How can the “lack of data” be remedied, since it is the members of the associations who have decided that only the absolutely necessary data will be recorded, or that stillbirths or abortions will not be reported to the stud book at all?

A. P.: Yes, that is a problem. But I think we’re at a point now where we have to think about where do we want to go with breeding Arabian horses in the next 20 or 30 years? The breeders should arrange for the associations to collect the relevant data. The same applies to proof of performance, regardless of whether it is equestrian sport, racing, endurance or show.

IN THE FOCUS: Let’s move from mares to stallions: Stallions have a much greater influence on breeding in terms of numbers. For example, QR Marc has sired over 850 offspring in the last 15 years…

A. P.: What makes a good stallion? For me he has to have performance-tested ancestors, he must be free of hereditary defects, proven performance, best conformation and – very important – an impeccable character. If a stallion is problematic and cannot be handled, he has no place in breeding. Let’s get to the question: How do I breed a good stallion? For me, this is the most exciting question of all! I currently see far too few good young stallions in Arabian horse breeding in order to have a few good stallions available for breeding in 5 or 10 years. How to address this problem? In breeding you can say: behind every good stallion there is a good stallion mother. The mare from which you want to breed a future sire is extremely important. Good mares in particular should remain in breeding and planned, targeted matings should be encouraged.

IN THE FOCUS: What dangers do you see in show horse breeding?

A. P.: My job here as a population geneticist is to point out developmental trends. One must be aware of the dangers of where the path leads if we continue in this direction for a long time. I want to come back to the cattle here to show what effects show breeding has, because it really runs in parallel:

Just like in Arabian breeding, in cattle breeders try to achieve a straight topline. The topline must be completely straight, only then it corresponds to the show standard. But what happens when this has been achieved? By selecting for the straight topline, the sacrum descends into the pelvis and makes birth more difficult. The birth ducts become smaller (narrower) because – as desired by breeders – the sacrum lowers.

Poorly developed muscles in the hindquarters – let’s remember again the male calves mentioned at the beginning, which have poor muscles. This is due to the fact that the spinous processes of the sacrum have shortened by 2-3 cm due to incorrect selection. This means that the attachment area for the muscles is lost and this creates these muscle-poor pelvises. And I see exactly this tendency with the show horses.

In cattle breeding, a survey has shown that over 90% of Holstein cattle are asthenics, i.e. tall, narrow animals, while less than 10% are athletics, i.e. the medium-framed type with the broad chest, which could compensate for this in the population. Now you actually want to breed an animal that is as well balanced as possible, but to do this you would have to have a medium-framed, broad stallion/bull available for the vast majority of animals. However, these only make up less than 10% of the population. And this is exactly the direction horse breeding is going in!

The position of the hip joint, in cattle this is called the inverter, meaning the point at which the thigh attaches to the pelvis. The selection for the straight topline tends to shift the hip joint backwards, which means that the animal has to put the hind legs behind the body, which in turn has a negative impact on movement, creates kidney pressure and significantly worsens the resilience of the back.

The extreme “typey” head with dish is, in my opinion, a deformation. Anyone who demands a minimum level of performance from their horse will recognize that a horse with an extreme dish will have trouble breathing. This would require research to understand the exact connections. But we know from dogs and cats that the shortening of the nose does not reduce the amount of mucous membrane material in the nasopharynx. However, this is no longer tight, but rather “wrinkled”, which leads to the familiar wheezing breathing noises. The lower jaw and the ridge are no longer straight, but are curved, which leads to dental problems. Teeth change very slowly in evolutionary terms. The desert Arabians’ teeth are too large for today’s delicate heads and therefore have space problems in their jaws.

The refinement of the head in particular, but also of the entire horse, and the associated lack of gender type in the stallions. This has, for example, effects on the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland controls the entire hormonal process in the organism. It shrinks and you intervene directly in the animal’s hormonal balance and ultimately select against fertility. Here is also an example from cattle breeding: we are increasingly receiving feedback from farmers about weak contractions during birth. What happened here: the hormone oxytocin is responsible for water retention in the tissues before birth and during birth for triggering contractions. All of these natural regulators are significantly weakened by the change in the pituitary gland; the hormone levels are too low. As a result, the contractions during birth mean that the remaining blood is not sufficiently pressed from the placenta via the umbilical cord into the foetus. A normal calf has around 7 litres of blood in its system shortly after birth. If contractions are weak, the calves are usually taken out using mechanical pulling aid and the calves often only have around 3.5 litres of blood in their system and are therefore clearly weak and have to be brought with great effort through the first three weeks of life or even die.

Insufficient depth of the thorax means that the animal has no space for the organs, especially for the heart and lungs. Such animals lack endurance and performance, and the performance of the lymphatic system is significantly reduced.

The middle section is too long – although a feature of the Arabian horse is its short back! Nevertheless, long backs are selected here, which means that the animals have backs that are far too soft and the backs are no longer stable. The long back causes the loins to sink and the animals can no longer walk without pain.

Significant weaknesses in the connective tissue. Selection for early maturity and the associated rapid growth lead to a significant weakening of the connective tissue. We examined this in cattle over long periods of time based on the suspension of the uterus in the abdomen/pelvis and the back formation of the uterus after birth. Swollen legs and swollen hocks are a sign of this weakness in the connective tissue in horses – and these animals are ultimately completely useless as riding horses.

IN THE FOCUS: An important aspect today is size. The Arabian horse, which was imported to Europe 200 years ago, was often smaller than 1.50 m, but today customers demand a horse that should be 10 cm taller. What “dangers” can we expect when our “cultural Arabs” become bigger and bigger?

A. P.: In cattle, we examined what happens when the animals get bigger and heavier and what effects this has. On average, a cow weighs around 600 kg. If we now have 100 kg more body weight, this inevitably means an enormous increase in resources just to maintain the body. I agree with H. V. Musgrave Clark, an English Arabian breeder who valued small horses around 1.45 m and did not use any animal for breeding that was over 1.53 m. He lived in America for several years and worked there as a post rider and his insight was that medium-sized horses always had the greatest endurance. For us, this means that selection for excessive size, i.e. for animals that are over 1.60 – 1.65 m, is not effective. The size must fluctuate freely, which means there may well be animals that are larger, but you shouldn’t select especially for this.

IN THE FOCUS: What could happen next?

A. P.: The state stud farms are dissolving, unfortunately one has to say that. In Russia, Khrenovoye was privatized and Arabian breeding was abandoned. Tersk is also privatized and today has three different breeding programs, racehorses, show horses and “Classic Russian”, although this last group is becoming smaller and smaller. In Poland we have seen that displacement breeding with show horses is taking place. If this goes on for another 10 years, there will be nothing left of the original Polish Arab. But there are also small glimmers of hope. A very interesting project was launched in Spain back in 2003. A breeding value for performance tests was developed; there are different selection levels, including young horse selection, tested sires and elite sires. Finally, I would like to introduce a project that we have launched here in cattle breeding. We have decided to maintain long-term performance breeding because this type of cattle has no chance at all due to genomic selection and breeding value estimation as currently carried out. We therefore founded an association and then looked for cow families that met our criteria for long-term performance breeding. Then we bought bulls from them, i.e. we now have almost 40 bulls in the insemination station, we have our own semen depot, and we use it to supply farmers who are interested in this type of breeding. Something similar could also be applied to the Arabian horse. You would need a Europe-wide breeding platform, and of course you have to think about how you could finance something like that. Then you need much better data collection, research work would have to be done, you would have to network the individual initiatives (like in Spain, see above), record stallion and mare lines to see which ones are at risk, start a survey to find out which frozen semen from older stallions still exist and – and this is very important to me – there needs to be a transfer of knowledge. It would be necessary to offer breeding advice for the next, younger generation of breeders, because otherwise the old hippological knowledge would be completely lost.

IN THE FOCUS: Thank you very much for your clear words and your commitment to preserving the old values in our breed.

The interview was conducted by Gudrun Waiditschka.

[caesarsaladinn]

"AI? yeah, I totally agree that it's gross. it absolutely takes the beauty out of the creative process and reduces it to something sterile, uniform, stripped of all the individual quirks and context that gave it variety. we're voluntarily handing the power of creation over to the megacorps. plus there's the potential for reducing genetic diversity, I mean did you know 99% of US dairy cattle are descended from only two bloodlines? that doesn't happen with the traditional method!"

[cowboymeemaw]

Welcome to some random more disappointing updates about farm life.

Things in a life like this are constantly changing and with all the good comes some sad. Though aint none of you know that much about me or anything I just wanted a place to post my thoughts.

After a lengthy conversation, I've made the decision to sell one of my Gilts (female pig) Dolly. She has been posted on this blog before. I got her a few months back as a prospect gilt and show pig, she has been a small grower and didn't make weight in time. So since then (the first week of August) she has been a freeloader. I love her and she was going to be a breeding sow next year, but since my younger siblings decided to start showing hogs we don't have the space or extra change to feed a mouth that can't turn a profit. (that may sound harsh but those are the things I have to think about when it comes to my operation). However since she carries potential, and is sired by an Ohio State Champion boar Ive decided to sell her as a breeding prospect and not bring her to the sales barn. On sadder news, as this conversation came up about getting rid of some of the animals we can't have a use for, Tick came into the conversation. Tick is my two-year-old pet Angus bull, he was born a second twin and due to inbreeding of club calf genetics, he has dwarfism. Along with that, he has something called Spastic Paresis. This is an unfixable muscular disability, that usually affects dairy cattle, and which can't be cured but can be livable if the animal is not in pain. During the summertime he was thriving, we got him in August of 2023, and he was steady, healthy, and not in pain since. But as of recent months, we've seen a slow decline in quality of life. My #1 goal is to make sure all my animals have a quality of life and when they don't the only morally correct thing to do is humane euthanasia. Though I said he was mine, it is better to say he is my mom's pet bull, and she has a tough time making these decisions. She has been putting it off but has also realized that as the colder months come he will only get worse. He does not seem to be in pain but he does seem uncomfortable, his mobility has gotten worse and so has his ability to hold on to weight. So in the next months, we will have to put him to sleep and bury him under the Oak tree. These types of decisions, both of them, are hard but necessary to make. Due to the stigma against farmers, you don't really hear this side of the industry but I am not going to hide it. Through both good and bad we have to make choices.

[covid-safer-hotties]

In the U.S. Response to Avian Influenza, Echoes of Covid-19 - Published Sept 2, 2024

By Joshua Cohen

It’s been about five months since the Texas Department of State Health Services announced that a worker on a dairy farm had tested positive for avian influenza A (H5N1) virus after being exposed to apparently infected cattle. Since then, the U.S. public health response has been slow and disjointed, bringing back memories of how the federal government responded during the early phase of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite having a pandemic playbook in early 2020, the U.S. appeared flat-footed in its response to Covid-19, including inadequate testing and unavailable personal protective equipment. And throughout the pandemic, mixed messaging on masks and later vaccines set back public health efforts.

As H5N1 circulates, it seems that lessons from Covid-19 remain unlearned. It appears that missteps are being made regarding testing, surveillance, transparency, and failure of communication and coordination throughout the health care system, the same kinds of things that hurt the response to Covid-19.

“The World Health Organization,” according to NPR, “considers the virus a public health concern because of its potential to cause a pandemic.” What may be concerning is that the genetic sequence of the Spanish flu that killed between 50 and 100 million people from 1918 to 1919 was later found to be an H1N1 virus that originated in birds and then somehow adapted to humans. And based on confirmed cases, the case fatality rate could be as high as 50 percent, as over the past two decades roughly half of about 900 people around the globe known to have contracted bird flu died from it. (There are two caveats, however: Due to limited testing, there were likely more cases that were undetected which would lower the mortality rate. And in the last two years, the global case fatality rate seems to have decreased.)

As of Aug. 30, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that 196 dairy cow herds in 14 U.S. states have confirmed cases of avian influenza.

There have been 14 reported cases in humans since 2022, all of whom were exposed to cattle or poultry, and reports suggest that there may be even more sick farm workers who haven’t been tested. There’s no evidence the virus has started to spread among people, but that could change as the situation evolves. The possibility of spillover is always of concern to experts. One of two main competing theories of coronavirus origins and how it evolved into a human-to-human transmissible infection is zoonotic transfer from mammals sold at a wet market in Wuhan, China, to humans.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack declared at a press conference in June that his department “is trying to corner the virus,” while releasing a report that human activity is a conduit to bird flu being transmitted between animals when workers, cows, vehicles and equipment move between farms.

But experts have voiced sharp criticism of the U.S. government’s response, especially around the lack of comprehensive surveillance efforts to ascertain the extent of the outbreak. When interviewed by KFF Health News, Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health said, “We’re flying blind.” Without sufficient testing, it’s impossible to know how many animals and humans have been infected or whether the virus has begun to spread between people.

As could have been learned from the Covid-19 experience, integral to conventional approaches to curbing transmission of infectious diseases is a comprehensive set of track, isolate, and contact trace policies. These have not been systematically implemented.

"Without a collective effort across all states, there’s nothing to stop avian flu from spreading around the country."

Michigan stands out as a state with a robust policy to track human and animal infections and investigate which activities pose the most risk. First, the state’s chief medical executive told STAT, Michigan tested more individuals this spring than any other state. And then the Department of Health and Human Services in Michigan launched a pioneering effort to detect asymptomatic (silent) bird flu infections among farmworkers. Furthermore, a press release from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development notes that under state rules dairy and commercial poultry producers must implement biosecurity practices, which include establishing cleaning and disinfection protocols at access points for individuals and vehicles.

Investigators believe the virus may have begun to spread in Michigan when workers operating multiple dairy and poultry operations came in close contact with infected cows and moved from one farm to another.

In April, the USDA issued a federal order requiring testing before lactating dairy cattle can be moved across state lines. Michigan, along with nearly two dozen other states, has also issued its own restrictions. But without a collective effort across all states, there’s nothing to stop avian flu from spreading around the country.

Furthermore, how effective can containment be when the USDA’s order only requires testing for bird flu in lactating cows prior to interstate movement, and no other types of animals?

One of the challenges in managing any major outbreak is the question of who’s in charge to coordinate across departments, such as Health and Human Services, Agriculture, and Commerce. For the purpose of inter-department coordination, the Biden administration launched an Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy in 2023.

Among federal agencies, the CDC (housed within the Department of Health and Human Services) appears to be the most actively involved in coordinating state efforts. It has provided assistance for a seroprevalence study in Michigan, to assess whether asymptomatic infections are present in people, for example.

But despite these efforts, there’s lack of clarity around who has jurisdictional authority over what and where. Rick Bright, a virologist and immunologist and former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, explained to CNN why he thinks that a more transparent and comprehensive approach to testing and genetic sequencing is needed. He’s concerned that viral adaptations can occur if there are enough opportunities through uncontrolled spread.

The CDC does now have a roadmap, which it announced for preventing and understanding human infection with bird flu and a plan to develop countermeasures. The roadmap’s main objectives include infection prevention by deploying PPE; examination of primary modes of transmission and estimates of incubation periods, duration of infection and severity; monitoring of genetic changes in the virus; and evaluating vaccines and antivirals. CDC Director Mandy Cohen said lessons from Covid-19 have been learned and that CDC is building upon them, for instance, through its wastewater surveillance efforts.

The CDC’s ability to implement these lofty goals may be hampered, however, by seemingly limited resources. The federal government has pledged only modest new funds this year of approximately $200 million to help track and contain H5N1. Separately, the government is allocating $176 million in Moderna to develop an mRNA vaccine against H5N1.

And conspicuously absent are concrete plans, such as how to deploy the stockpile of 10 million doses of avian flu vaccines the federal government currently has as well as the inventory of the antiviral Tamiflu (oseltamivir). By contrast, Finland is now offering vaccines to farmworkers.

"The CDC’s ability to implement these lofty goals may be hampered, however, by seemingly limited resources."

Aside from inadequate funding and preparation, there’s a problem of overcoming public distrust. A survey published in Health Affairs suggests that about 42 percent of American adult respondents in early 2022 said they had confidence in the CDC to provide quality health information during the Covid-19 pandemic, while about a third said they trusted state and local health departments. This may partly explain why the CDC is now having trouble getting farmers to cooperate with even rudimentary tracking and mitigation efforts regarding H5N1.

Lessons from the history of how Covid-19 unfolded underscore the importance of not being complacent in the face of a potential future bird flu pandemic. It would seem imperative to take proactive measures such as systematic testing of animals and humans exposed to the virus, mitigate transmission risk in the dairy and poultry industries, and coordinate federal and state responses.

[moontyger]

We’ve learned that the viral load in milk from infected cows is especially high. This suggests that infection might be spread through milking machines or when the milking rooms are power washed, aerosolizing infected milk. This is why workers should wear protective gear.

Another huge problem is that cattle in the U.S. are fed poultry “litter,” a euphemism for leftover feathers, bird droppings, spilled seed, and the occasional dead mouse or rat mixed in. There is supposed to be a 15-day period before cattle are slaughtered when the broiler litter is not to be used. Because of this two-week “weaning period” before human consumption, dairy cows are not supposed to be fed bird litter.

Cow manure—based on poultry litter—is widely spread on fields as a fertilizer, including on organic farms. So, our whole agricultural supply chain could be at risk of spreading infection. At least with limited testing, it doesn't look like cows are shedding virus thru their stool.

There are other possible routes of transmission. For example, house flies and blow flies can transmit H5N1 and other avian influenza viruses. During an HPAI (H5N1) epidemic in Thailand in 2005, blood-engorged mosquitoes collected at poultry farms tested positive for H5N1 by reverse transcription-PCR. Windborne spread could explain up to 24% of the transmission over distances up to 25 km in the 2003 outbreak.

There is now apparently spread of infection from cows back to birds. Grackles, blackbirds, and chickens all showed mutations from mammals, suggesting this route.

Gaps In Response

The government’s response to this potential biothreat has been reactive and limited.

The strongest initial criticism is that, despite calls for data and sample sharing as a foundation of pandemic preparedness, the USDA has not fully shared their data. When it finally shared genetic sequences with GISAID, the international database widely used by scientists since 2008, the USDA did not say where the samples originated nor include critical timing data.

Another problem is that the testing of cows is limited to dairy cows before they are moved to a different state. We don’t know if beef cattle are infected.

Surprisingly, the government apparently has had no power to restrict the movement of cattle or to require testing or reporting of infected herds or workers. A number of farmers are reluctant to allow testing. We know how voluntary reporting and restrictions will work…

However, on April 24, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced that dairy cows would have to be tested before interstate transport and that labs and vets would have to report positive tests in cows. APHIS also announced finding H5N1 in a lung tissue sample from an asymptomatic dairy cow in an affected herd.

While there was one recently reported case of conjunctivitis in a person, there is likely to be considerable underreporting. There have been anecdotal reports of other symptomatic workers with fever, cough, and lethargy—and who do not want to be tested or seen by doctors. Many workers are likely undocumented and have no trust in the government. Dairy owners won’t want to risk prices falling or calls to cull their herds. Cattle veterinarian Dr. Barb Petersen said there has been underreporting and fear. She told Bovine Veterinarian’s journalist Rhonda Brooks, “But every dairy that I've worked with has – with the exception of one – had sick human beings at the same time they had sick cows.” She also reported infections in people with no direct contact with dairy cows. “I'm talking owners and feeders who don't usually touch cows.”

[lenbryant]

(Times) This May Be Our Last Chance to Halt Bird Flu in Humans, and We Are Blowing It

The outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza among U.S. dairy cows, first reported on March 25, has now spread to at least 33 herds in eight states. On Wednesday, genetic evidence of the virus turned up in commercially available milk. Federal authorities say the milk supply is safe, but this latest development raises troubling questions about how widespread the outbreak really is.

So far, there is only one confirmed human case. Rick Bright, an expert on the H5N1 virus who served on President Biden’s coronavirus advisory board, told me this is the crucial moment. “There’s a fine line between one person and 10 people with H5N1,” he said. “By the time we’ve detected 10, it’s probably too late” to contain.

That’s when I told him what I’d heard from Sid Miller, the Texas commissioner for agriculture. He said he strongly suspected that the outbreak dated back to at least February. The commissioner speculated that then as many as 40 percent of the herds in the Texas Panhandle might have been infected.

Dr. Bright fell silent, then asked a very reasonable question: “Doesn’t anyone keep tabs on this?”

The H5N1 outbreak, already a devastating crisis for cattle farmers and their herds, has the potential to turn into an enormous tragedy for the rest of us. But having spent the past two weeks trying to get answers from our nation’s public health authorities, I’m shocked by how little they seem to know about what’s going on and how little of what they do know is being shared in a timely manner.

How exactly is the infection transmitted between herds? The United States Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all say they are working to figure it out.

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter  Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. 

According to many public health officials, the virus load in the infected cows’ milk is especially high, raising the possibility that the disease is being spread through milking machines or from aerosolized spray when the milking room floors are power washed. Another possible route is the cows’ feed, owing to the fairly revolting fact that the U.S. allows farmers to feed leftover poultry bedding material — feathers, excrement, spilled seeds — to dairy and beef cattle as a cheap source of additional protein.

Alarmingly, the U.S.D.A. told me that it has evidence that the virus has also spread from dairy farms back to poultry farms “through an unknown route.” Well, one thing that travels back and forth between cattle farms and chicken farms is human beings. They can also travel from cattle farms to pig farms, and pigs are the doomsday animals for human influenza pandemics. Because they are especially susceptible to both avian and human flu, they make for good petri dishes in which avian influenza can become an effective human virus. The damage could be vast.

The U.S.D.A. also told me it doesn’t know how many farmers have tested their cattle and doesn’t know how many of those tests came up positive; whatever testing is being done takes place at the state level or in private labs. Just Wednesday, the agency made it mandatory to report all positive results, a long overdue step that is still — without the negative results alongside them — insufficient to give us a full picture. Also on Wednesday, the U.S.D.A. made testing mandatory for dairy cattle that are being moved from one state to another. It says mandatory testing of other herds wouldn’t be “practical, feasible or necessarily informative” because of “several reasons, ranging from laboratory capacity to testing turnaround times.” The furthest the agency will go is to recommend voluntary testing for cattle that show symptoms of the illness — which not all that are infected do. Dr. Bright compares this to the Trump administration’s approach to Covid-19: If you don’t test, it doesn’t exist.

As for the F.D.A., it tells me it hasn’t completed specific tests to confirm that pasteurization would make milk from infected cows safe, though the agency considers it “very likely” based on extensive testing for other pathogens. (It is not yet clear whether the elements of the H5N1 virus that recently turned up in milk had been fully neutralized.) That testing should have been completed by now. In any case, unpasteurized milk remains legal in many states. Dr. Bright told me that “this is a major concern, especially given recent infections and deaths in cats that have consumed infected milk.”

Making matters worse, the U.S.D.A. failed to share the genomes from infected animals in a timely manner, and then when it shared the genomes did so in an unwieldy format and without any geographic information, causing scientists to tear their hair out in frustration.

All this makes catching potential human cases so urgent. Dr. Bright says that given a situation like this, and the fact that undocumented farmworkers may not have access to health care, the government should be using every sophisticated surveillance technique, including wastewater testing, and reporting the results publicly. That is not happening. The C.D.C. says it is monitoring data from emergency rooms for any signs of an outbreak. By the time enough people are sick enough to be noticed in emergency rooms, it is almost certainly too late to prevent one.

So far, the agency told me, it is aware of only 23 people who have been tested. That tiny number is deeply troubling. (Others may be getting tested through private providers, but if negative, the results do not have to be reported.)

On the ground, people are doing the best they can. Adeline Hambley, a public health officer in Ottawa, Mich., told me of a farm whose herd had tested positive. The farm owner voluntarily handed over the workers’ cellphone numbers, and the workers got texts asking them to report all potential symptoms. Lynn Sutfin, a public information officer in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, told me that response rates to those texts and other forms of outreach can be as high as 90 percent. That’s heartening, but it’s too much to expect that a poor farmworker — afraid of stigma, legal troubles and economic loss — will always report even mild symptoms and stay home from work as instructed.

It’s entirely possible that we’ll get lucky with H5N1 and it will never manage to spread among humans. Spillovers from animals to humans are common, yet pandemics are rare because they require a chain of unlucky events to happen one after the other. But pandemics are a numbers game, and a widespread animal outbreak like this raises the risks. When dangerous novel pathogens emerge among humans, there is only a small window of time in which to stop them before they spiral out of control. Neither our animal farming practices nor our public health tools seem up to the task.

There is some good news: David Boucher, at the federal government’s Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, told me that this virus strain is a close match for some vaccines that have already been formulated and that America has the capacity to manufacture and potentially distribute many millions of doses, and fairly quickly, if it takes off in humans. That ability is a little like fire insurance — I’m glad it exists, but by the time it comes into play your house has already burned down.

I’m sure the employees of these agencies are working hard, but the message they are sending is, “Trust us — we are on this.” One troubling legacy of the coronavirus pandemic is that there was too much attention on telling the public how to feel — to panic or not panic — rather than sharing facts and inspiring confidence through transparency and competence. And four years later we have an added layer of polarization and distrust to work around.

In April 2020, the Trump administration ousted Dr. Bright from his position as the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the agency responsible for fighting emerging pandemics. In a whistle-blower complaint, he alleged this happened after his early warnings against the coronavirus pandemic were ignored and as retaliation for his caution against unproven treatments favored by Donald Trump.

Dr. Bright told me that he would have expected things to be much different during the current administration, but “this is a live fire test,” he said, “and right now we are failing it.”

Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, the author of “Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest” and a New York Times Opinion columnist. @zeynep • Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on April 28, 2024, Section SR, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: The U.S. Is Blowing Its Chance to Halt Bird Flu in Humans. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

[grandmaster-anne]

LIFE AT GATCOMBE PARK: Country Life was granted an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look into Princess Anne’s life at her Gloucestershire home.

Country Life | Published 29 July 2020

Guest-Edited by HRH The Princess Royal

The Princess says: ‘There are so many different parts of Gatcombe and that’s the best thing about it. It’s a proper mixed farm—not that we were looking to farm, in the beginning!’

GATCOMBE PARK is inhabited by curious Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs that like to watch dressage, elegant, sooty-nosed White Park cattle, a matronly Suffolk filly, bustling Buff Orpington hens and their feisty cockerel and venerable grazing Wiltshire Horn sheep that resemble the inhabitants of a pastoral scene from a Thomas Hardy novel. Britain’s endlessly diverse, entertaining and genetically crucial native farm animals have long owed a great deal to the agricultural interests of the Royal Family.

The idea of improving livestock dates back centuries, but it was during Queen Victoria’s reign that enthusiasm for breed societies, official studbooks and competing at agricultural shows really took off and, ever since, British livestock breeds have benefited from knowledgeable, close royal interest and loyalty.

The Queen Mother presided over the North Country Cheviot Sheep Society and, with George VI, the Aberdeen-Angus Cattle Society —she kept and bred both breeds at her Castle of Mey farm in Caithness. The Queen, who succeeded her mother as president of the Highland Cattle Society, bestows royal patronage on, among others, the Ayrshire and Jersey cattle societies. The Prince of Wales is president of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) and patron of The Poultry Club of Great Britain.

Some 30 of The Princess Royal’s 200-plus charitable patronages relate to animals and her 500-acre estate in Gloucestershire, which was formerly a dairy farm and has only a small nucleus of modest agricultural buildings, showcases an eclectic collection of sometimes neglected breeds, all organically reared and grass fed.

Their presence is a necessity: although the valley pastureland looks the rural, bucolic idyll, Cotswold brash does not make for rich arable soil and, as The Princess points out, turning organic with hardy livestock breeds, the meat from which is chiefly sold locally, was the only economically viable option. She also observes that cattle farming here isn’t easy, due to a local abundance of badgers.

‘Organic has become a more difficult market over the years,’ she discerns. ‘I think perhaps the emphasis now is more on buying local and in looking after your soil. We have to keep finding more imaginative uses for land.’

Part of the estate is farmed under the Government’s Higher Level Stewardship scheme, through which farmers receive payments for delivering conservation benefits, such as wildflower margins—these schemes terminate at the end of the Brexit transition period in 2022.

About half is woodland—a glorious mix of broadleaf species with plenty of beech—managed by Vice-Admiral Sir Tim Laurence (My Week, page 78). There is a modest pheasant shoot and a partridge shoot overseen by The Princess’s son, Peter Phillips. He is also the director of the annual Festival of British Eventing, which should have been taking place here next week, but, as have most sporting events this summer, has sadly had to be cancelled.

The crowds of picnicking cross-country spectators are, more than anyone, familiar with the pleasingly shaped ashlar limestone house that forms a graceful backdrop to the horse trials at the head of the valley, overseeing the thrills and spills in the water fences around the ponds below.

A successful clothier, Edward Sheppard, signalled his prosperity by having the house built on the old manors of Avening and Minchinhampton between 1771 and 1774 by Francis Franklin of Chalford. The familiar conservatory—as well as the polygonal stables and coach house—was added by George Basevi in the early 19th century, when the property was acquired by the wealthy MP and influential political economist David Ricardo, in whose family it remained until 1937. Gatcombe has been the home of The Princess Royal since 1976.

The pigs

TRADITIONALLY, horses are not fans of pigs and, at horse-trials time, there are requests for the Gloucestershire Old Spots (GOS) to be kept away from the dressage arenas—although, as The Princess points out, it’s good for horses to learn to behave and riders to manage them. One day, a porcine group managed to make its way towards the action, grunting curiously: ‘Then, suddenly, something startled them and they scattered in all directions,’ recalls The Princess. ‘It was hysterical. They’re very chatty.’

Owners of highly strung horses need not worry too much, however. The cheerful pigs mainly live in woodland, where it’s shady in summer and there are enough holes and dips in the ground to shelter them from winter winds whistling overhead. The GOS also has a distinctive layer of back fat, which not only lends succulence and flavour to the meat, but keeps out the chill.

As with the cattle, the difficulty is in maintaining bloodlines—there are only four GOS boar lines in the country. ‘The original idea was to do weaners, but there weren’t enough around and we had to go back to breeding our own,’ notes farm manager Sam Stevens. ‘We found ourselves going as far as Cheshire for a pedigree boar.’

The GOS originated not far from Gatcombe in the cider and perry orchards of the Berkeley Vale and also has been dubbed the orchard pig—the spots were said to be bruises from falling apples—as well as the cottager’s pig. It was the first animal to have its meat awarded Traditional Speciality Guaranteed status by the EU, yet the breed is classified by the RBST as ‘at risk’, with fewer than 500 breeding sows in the country. The Princess is patron of the breed club.

The chickens

A TINY corner of the estate is given over to a flock of Buff Orpington hens and an imperious cockerel. ‘My grandmother kept them,’ explains The Princess. ‘They’re not overly prolific layers, but when they do, they produce big eggs.’

The majestic Buff Orpington, its golden plumage not far from the honey shade of some Cotswold stone, is a popular country-house chicken for its ornamental good looks, pleasingly solid shape and friendly, biddable nature.

The Orpington was greeted with great acclaim from poultry fanciers when first revealed, in 1886, by William Cook, a coachman from the eponymous Kent town. Poultry showing and fancy fowl, the more exotic the better, were big interests at the time, but the trend was also moving towards practicality and the Orpington bridged the gap between ornament and egg producer.

The cattle

A FEW Highland cattle inhabit Gatcombe Park—these endearingly shaggy-fringed beasts are now frequently seen south of the Scottish border, thanks to their rising usefulness as conservation grazers—but The Princess has long been a champion of the White Park. Classified ‘minority’ on the RBST watchlist (there are some 950 breeding females in the country), the White Park is thought to be Britain’s most ancient native cattle, with records dating back at least to the 10th century. Little surprise, therefore, that the RBST chose the breed as its logo.

These magnificent animals with their appealing black ‘points’ once adorned many parklands of the nobility, but, when such places declined in the 19th century, so did the cattle. Only four of these ancient herds survive, one of which is at Dinefwr in Carmarthenshire; the National Trust recently launched an appeal to raise £36,000 to buy another bull to keep the bloodline alive.

White Parks are tough, thrifty—able to flourish on coarse forage—and they produce quality, marbled beef. ‘We originally thought about having Shorthorns, but White Parks are more distinctive,’ comments The Princess, who acquired some of hers from a herd running free on Salisbury Plain.

‘I’m trying to improve them, but it’s a case of how to keep the colour.’ Because they are in possession of the black gene, the cattle can breed out with mottled black markings all over the body or even in solid black, as evinced by some of the striking beasts here; the points can come in red, too.

The horses

THERE has been a new arrival—a little chestnut Thoroughbred colt foal, Reel Fashion, by jumping sire Schiaparelli out of Gatcombe mare Fiddle Faddle. The Princess’s equestrian career is forever synonymous with eventing—she won the European title in 1971, a clutch of medals and was a member of the British team at the Montreal Olympic Games in 1976—but she also rode winners on the Flat and over jumps as an amateur jockey and her horse-breeding interests centre around the National Hunt world. ‘They have to do something useful,’ she remarks.

There are plenty of event horses around, too: The Princess’s daughter, Zara Tindall, herself a former European champion and a world and Olympic medallist, has hers at nearby Aston Farm and Tom McEwen, who, if things were normal, might reasonably have expected to be at the Tokyo Olympics right now, is the latest in a long line of fine horsemen to make Gatcombe their eventing base.

Amid a field of bay Thoroughbred fillies, Winnie, the Suffolk mare, cuts an imposing, solid presence. She’s also friendly—and curious, enthusiastically nibbling the windscreen wipers. ‘I bought her grandmother from the Hollesley Bay Colony Stud in Suffolk when they sold up,’ explains The Princess, who is patron of the Suffolk Horse Society, founded in 1877.

These striking heavy horses, with their rich chestnut coats and paler, flaxen or silver manes and tails, were bred to work the clay soil of East Anglia, but the difficulty of finding a role for them outside ploughing and timber hauling means that they are classified as ‘critical’ on the RBST watchlist. One potential outlet is as steady, careful mounts for Riding for the Disabled, another of The Princess’s long-time patronages. ‘Lockdown has been very hard on families with disabled children,’ she points out. ‘The number of parents who say their children’s behaviour has improved thanks to riding is striking.’

The sheep

SOME 230 Wiltshire Horn ewes graze the farm. Again, this is a hardy breed, which for centuries inhabited the treeless Wiltshire Downs, where there’s neither shade nor shelter. Wiltshire Horns lamb outside and, conveniently, are the original wool-shedding (no shearing) sheep, their fleece naturally shedding in spring and growing again in autumn.

The impressive horns come in useful, too: ‘You don’t really want horns inside, as that’s when your shins get mangled, but, outside, you’ve got handles to grab them with,’ observes Mr Stevens. ‘And,’ he adds, ‘they produce fantastic meat. Even the hogget meat isn’t overly fatty.’

Wiltshire Horn numbers dwindled alarmingly in the 19th century, a time when wool was a far more important currency than it is now, but, in 1923, a group of owners, determined to preserve genetic purity, formed the breed society. Competition from other wool-rich breeds caused further decline and the Wiltshire Horn came under the wing of the RBST in the 1970s, but new recognition of its low-maintenance qualities means that it’s now off the watchlist.

[dimorphodon-x]

so, I just had a thought, yknow how piebaldism is a thing right? and then there's cows. - Are cows technically Piebald automatically via genetics??? (generally holstein/dairy cows) V example of a dairy and piebald fawn

idk thought it was cool to share :P

Never really looked into genetics tbh so I can’t say for certain but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, especially if you look at other cattle breeds that are typically a solid color

[female-malice]

It is a refined form of brewing that uses microorganisms to make ingredients we currently get from animals or plants. While our ancient ancestors made bread, cheese, and beer by using the microorganisms that were randomly present in their environment, today’s precision fermentation can genetically reprogramme microorganisms to make exact nutrients. Here’s how to do it:

Choose a specific microorganism such as a yeast or bacteria.

Genetically engineer the microorganism with the DNA sequences coding for the amino acids which form the protein you want to create – such as the proteins found in cow’s milk: casein and whey.

Put the microorganisms in a fermentation tank with some simple nutrients and sugars.

Ferment! (Just like beer.)

Harvest food-grade ingredients that are biologically identical to those you’d get from an animal and mix them up into sellable familiar products (like dairy milk, cream or cheese…).

According to a new analysis in the Reboot Food report, protein from microorganisms uses up to 40,900 times less land than beef, meaning that such ‘farm-free foods’ could produce the entire world’s protein requirements on just 420km2 of land – an area of land smaller than Greater London*

This would not only save 3/4s of global agricultural land for nature restoration and carbon drawdown but would also release up to 91% less greenhouse gases per calorie produced.

Precision fermentation is already used to produce 99% of the global insulin supply and 90% of the global rennet. Today PF milk proteins and PF egg whites have already reached the US grocery market.

Emma Smart, Coordinator of Replanet UK says “The precision fermentation revolution is as significant and consequential for our natural world and climate as the dawn of farming was 10,000 years ago. Only this time, today’s food revolution promises a new age for non-human life of regeneration not devastation.”

–

Solarpunk perspective:

This is huge. If we can end industrial animal agriculture in the next 5 years, we can avoid the worst climate emergency threats. We'll still have to weather mega storms for a few decades and open our hearts to a few million refugees. But we'll get through it together and we won't do it on an empty stomach.

Doomer perspective:

This is a disruptive technological application that promotes global equality. The global superpowers need animal agriculture so they can maintain their exploitation hierarchy. They want to speed-run the apocalypse. They want to be on top of the world when the world ends. And they want to see it end in their lifetime. "I was the best at this game all the way up to the end!"

So they'll do everything they can to suppress disruptive technological applications. That's why they will always choose oil over solar and animal agriculture over precision fermentation.

It won't just be a few decades of storms. We'll hit the tipping point cascade. Our entire global biodiversity system will unravel. 90% of species will go extinct. And humanity will die slowly and painfully of novel zoonotic diseases that spread globally through feral cattle. Our refusal to replace domesticated cows with domesticated microbes will ultimately lead to a feral zombie cow apocalypse plague.

Regional activism perspective:

Global superpowers are meaningless fools. As common people, we can remake society to suit our changing needs. Find out the total volume of animal protein your town consumes. Draft a municipal precision fermentation infrastructure plan. Spread flyers and leaflets everywhere. Start a RePlanet/Precision Fermentation advocacy group in your city.

The best place to meet people who would be extremely passionate about this technology is geek cafes and boardgame shops. Or better yet, a Star Trek convention. Precision fermentation is a Star Trek technology. It's called a "food replicator" in Star Trek. Rebranding from "precision fermentation" to "food replication" may help people be more open minded.

[cytgen]

Abstract A polymorphism (g.2141C>G) of the growth hormone (GH) gene was studied in the populations of cows of the Ukrainian red-spotted dairy, Montbeliard breeds, and crossbreeds obtained from the crossing of Ukrainian red-spotted dairy cows with Montbeliard bulls, and the analysis of reproductive traits of individuals with different genotypes was conducted. Genotyping of the growth hormone gene was carried out using a PCR–RFLP method. Both L and V alleles were detected in the experimental cow populations. The ratio of the frequencies of LL/LV/VV genotypes did not differ from the theoretically expected one for each of the experimental groups (χ2 = 0.91, p < 0.05; χ2 = 1.41, p < 0.05; χ2 = 1.66, p < 0.05, respectively). In the experimental populations of the Montbeliard breed and crossbred animals, the VV genotype frequency was 0.03 and 0.06, respectively; no VV genotype was detected in the population of the Ukrainian red-spotted breed. According to the traits of reproductive function, the cows of the experimental groups with the LL genotype variant had better indices as compared with their peers with the LV genotype: an earlier age of first insemination, lower index of insemination, and shorter intercalving period. According to the live weight at birth and growth dynamics in each experimental group of cows, the carriers of the LV genotype had an advantage. Regardless of the genotype, higher indices of live weight at birth and average daily growths were established in animals of the crossbred origin as compared with purebreds. The established polymorphism of the growth hormone gene (SNP g.2141C>G) indicates a feasibility of further studies and prospect of using it as a genetic marker of reproductive ability in marker-assisted selection of dairy cattle direction of productivity.

[whatsissue]

Should You Worry About Bird Flu? Experts Explain the Current Risks and Precautions

Should You Worry About Bird Flu? Experts Explain the Current Risks and Precautions The bird flu, specifically the H5N1 strain, has recently been spreading among dairy cows in California, Idaho, and Utah. While the virus primarily infects wild birds, it began impacting commercial poultry in 2022 and has now been detected in cattle since March 2024. Although there have been a few human cases linked to exposure to sick animals, experts emphasize that the situation is currently contained. Current Situation with Bird Flu The H5N1 outbreak was first identified in wild birds in January 2022 and quickly made its way to commercial poultry, affecting turkeys shortly after. Since then, the virus has been detected in various animals, including cattle, goats, alpacas, and even a pig. According to Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert, the ongoing outbreak is largely due to an increase in avian influenza activity among wild birds that has spilled over into livestock. Notably, this is the first time dairy cattle have been infected with H5N1, which raises concerns because there is no flu vaccine for cattle, and the dairy industry has never faced such a challenge before. The detection of H5N1 in pigs is particularly alarming since pigs can be infected by both human and avian viruses, potentially leading to the creation of new influenza strains that could infect humans. Can Humans Contract Bird Flu? As more animals become infected, the likelihood of human exposure increases. In April 2024, a person tested positive for H5N1 after exposure to infected cows, marking the first known case of cow-to-human transmission. By May, several additional cases were reported among individuals who had contact with infected dairy cows. In total, 46 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with bird flu this year due to exposure to infected animals. A July 2024 study suggested that the actual number of infections might be higher than reported, indicating that approximately 14.3% of farm workers tested had antibodies for H5N1, suggesting prior exposure to the virus. Public Health Threat Assessment According to the CDC, all cases documented in the current outbreak have been classified as sporadic instances of animal-to-human transmission. The risk to the general public remains low since there has been no evidence of human-to-human spread. For the virus to start spreading among humans, significant genetic changes would be necessary, allowing it to bind more effectively to human receptors. For those concerned about food safety, it’s important to note that pasteurized milk is safe, and properly cooking meat should eliminate any risk of the flu virus. Most reported symptoms in infected individuals have been mild, primarily respiratory issues and conjunctivitis. So far, no farmworkers diagnosed with HPAI have required hospitalization. Preparedness for a Larger Outbreak Experts warn that surveillance and testing efforts have not kept pace with the virus’s spread, which could allow it to adapt to humans. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced plans to enhance testing, collaborating with state veterinarians to bulk-test milk samples to understand where H5N1 is spreading. Dr. Richard Martinello stresses the importance of monitoring infections in animals, particularly pigs, as each new infection presents an opportunity for the virus to evolve. If clusters of human infections begin to emerge, it may indicate that the virus has gained the ability to spread among people. Vaccination and Prevention While vaccines for H5N1 have been developed, they are not yet publicly available. Experts recommend focusing on seasonal influenza vaccination as a more immediate protective measure, as seasonal flu poses a greater threat to public health than H5N1 at this time. Dr. Martinello emphasizes that getting vaccinated against seasonal influenza is a crucial step for personal protection. Conclusion While the current situation regarding bird flu is concerning, experts believe the risk to the general public remains low. Close monitoring of animal infections and enhanced testing will be vital in preventing the virus from adapting to humans. For now, staying informed and getting vaccinated against seasonal influenza are the best ways to protect yourself. Thank you for taking the time to read this article! Your thoughts and feedback are incredibly valuable to me. What do you think about the topics discussed? Please share your insights in the comments section below, as your input helps me create even better content. I’m also eager to hear your stories! If you have a special experience, a unique story, or interesting anecdotes from your life or surroundings, please send them to me at whatsissue@gmail.com. Your stories could inspire others and add depth to our discussions. If you enjoyed this post and want to stay updated with more informative and engaging articles, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button! I’m committed to bringing you the latest insights and trends, so stay tuned for upcoming posts. Wishing you a wonderful day ahead, and I look forward to connecting with you in the comments and reading your stories! Read the full article

[finnsmith855]

California reports third confirmed human case of bird flu, plus 2 more potential cases

Federal and state health officials said they have confirmed a third human case of bird flu in California and identified an additional two new possible cases.

The case was identified in a Central Valley dairy farm worker who had contact with infected cattle, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Thursday. To date, all three California cases occurred in dairy workers from three different farms with no known contact with each other.

In all three cases, symptoms were mild and involved red, bloodshot eyes — a sign of conjunctivitis. None of the three cases included hospitalization.

The California Department of Health said it has also identified two new possible human cases in the Central Valley, which is the state’s agricultural hub.

The identification of the bird flu virus in people with exposure to infected animals is not unexpected, the CDC said, and it does not change the agency’s risk assessment for the general public, which continues to be low.  

Outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu among California dairy herds were first reported in August. Since then, more than 90 herds in the state have been affected by bird flu, according to the latest update from the Department of Agriculture.

Including this most recent case, 17 human cases of the virus have been reported in the country this year. Previous cases were identified in workers in Texas, Colorado and Michigan. 

Also on Thursday, the CDC said it had sequenced the viruses from the first two human cases reported last week and publicly posted the results.

The agency said there were no genetic changes observed that are known to be associated with an increased ability to infect or spread between people or known to reduce susceptibility to antiviral medications.