Now that bird flu has been detected in animals in all 50 states, and nearly 70 cases have been confirmed in people, health officials are racing to find better and more reliable ways to track the virus.
One promising method is sampling wastewater. The technique continues to prove useful for monitoring COVID-19; since most people now self-test and formal data collection has diminished, wastewater is the most reliable way of tracking upticks and changes in infections since it doesn’t require people to report results.
Scientists are now figuring out how to apply the same principle to test wastewater on farms for H5N1, the avian influenza virus. On Feb. 4, the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) announced a grant to Barnwell Bio, Inc. to fund the development of a farm-based system for testing wastewater for pathogens. The nonprofit research group FFAR was created by Congress in 2014 via the Farm Bill to use both government and private funding to support important agricultural research, and Barnwell Bio focuses on agricultural applications of wastewater testing.
“The system is pretty patchwork” when it comes to understanding what makes animals sick, says Michael Rhys, CEO of Barnwell Bio. “There isn’t a gold standard for understanding animal health of different species.”
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Part of the problem has to do with the many species of animals that reside on farms, from pigs to chickens and cows. And not all farms have a central wastewater system, like towns and cities do, where all waste is processed. Developing a way to detect H5N1 in these conditions required specific strategies for each species, says Rhys.
To evaluate pathogens that affect chickens, which relieve themselves everywhere in the barn, the farmers wear booties that end up getting covered in the animals’ waste. Vets or health officials take samples from those booties, places them in test tubes, and analyzes them for the presence of H5N1.
As for cows, most dairy farms generally focus on milk-producing cows, so effluent can be sampled after workers hose down milking areas, since that’s where cows urinate.
The grant, which totals around $150,000, will help Rhys’ team to develop a test that farmers can use on site to detect H5N1 early. “Can we detect H5N1 early such that on a big chicken farm, it’s not spreading barn to barn?” says Rhys. “We’re also looking at different variants of H5N1 which can be helpful in understanding where it came from, whether it was a wild bird or it was an animal-to-animal infection.”
The company is currently working with two poultry farms to test the feasibility of their wastewater surveillance system.
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