60-second Science

Dairy cattle have become an intermediary between avian influenza found in wild birds and the handful of recorded H5N1 bird flu cases in humans. Senior news reporter Meghan Bartels took a trip upstate to Cornell University’s Teaching Dairy Barn. Early last year Texas dairy farmers noticed lethargic cows producing off-color milk. One of them sent Cornell researchers a sample, which genetic sequencing determined to contain a strain of H5N1. That strain traces its roots to the H5N1 virus that emerged in China in the late 1990s—which spread around the world thanks to migrating wild birds, such as those found on the beach that associate health and medicine editor Lauren Young visited in episode one of our three-part series about bird flu. And outbreak of H5N1 has been running through poultry farms since the early 2020s. Poultry farmers have been forced to cull flocks, reinforce biosecurity protocols and change the prices of eggs as a result. Dairy farms were less prepared for the spillover and its unexpected transi