PUBLIC HEALTHAs Bird Flu Spreads, Feds Might Undercut States by Firing Scientists, Removing Data
The avian influenza virus has killed millions of wild birds and led to emergency culling of commercial flocks.
As bird flu cases inundate more poultry and dairy farms, state officials worry that the Trump administration’s firings of federal scientists and other actions will undermine efforts to track the virus and protect Americans.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture rushed to rehire workers who were involved in responding to the outbreak and were fired amid federal workforce cuts. These employees were part of a federal network that oversees labs responsible for collecting samples and confirming H5N1 tests.
State officials also fear funding cuts will hamper those federal labs, and say that by scrubbing some public health data from government websites, the administration may complicate efforts to track the outbreak.
Federal labs are “key for us to be able to do our work, and we need to make sure those labs stay funded, or we can’t do what we do,” said Dr. Amber Itle, the state veterinarian for Washington state. Itle said federal money pays for most of her office’s bird flu efforts, and that the nation’s bird flu surveillance system — one of the most robust in the world — needs to stay in place.
President Donald Trump’s budget cuts and firings include thousands of terminations across the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, among others. While the USDA scrambled to rehire its workers, public health experts say federal agencies often work in tandem to respond to health emergencies.
A dozen probationary employees also were let go this month at the Manhattan, Kansas-based National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, a USDA spokesperson told Stateline. The federal facility works closely with the USDA and aims to protect agricultural systems against animal diseases. The spokesperson said these positions were administrative and “not deemed essential to the functions of the lab.”
“When we start to take away resources that we need to support animal health response, that ultimately could threaten public health,” Itle said, “because if we can’t find it in animals, we could be exposing people without knowing it.”
The Trump administration initially removed reams of public health data related to poverty, pollution, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, adolescent health, racial inequities, sex, gender and LGBTQ+ people from federal agency websites. Some of the data was quickly restored. But Washington state health officials said they are downloading bird flu-related information in case it disappears.
