A rural legal aid group is suing the California Department of Food and Agriculture for refusing to disclose the locations of dairies infected with H5N1 bird flu.
More than half of the 70 confirmed human cases of H5N1 bird flu infection in the United States in the last year and a half have been in California dairy workers.
California Rural Legal Assistance, a nonprofit that provides free civil legal services to low-income rural residents, together with the First Amendment Coalition, says the California agriculture department is withholding information that could protect the public and allow front-line responders, such as health clinics and labor groups, to assist farm workers and others at risk of infection.
“As a matter of first principle, the California Constitution and the California Public Records Act enshrine the strong right of the public to inspect the conduct of its public officials and to ensure that they are basically executing the duties that are given to them,” said David Cremins, an attorney with the rural legal group. The suit was filed Monday in Sacramento County Superior Court.
A spokesman for the state’s agriculture agency said he could not provide comment “because the matter is in litigation.”
Anja Raudabaugh, CEO of Western United Dairies — California’s largest dairy trade group — also declined to comment.
It was a surprise when H5N1 bird flu was found to have infected Texas dairy cattle in March 2024. It soon spread to workers. Most cases in the U.S. have been mild, but one person in Louisiana died, and several others were hospitalized.
Globally, H5N1 has killed hundreds of people. Until recently, its mortality rate was considered roughly 50%. It has also killed millions of wild birds, mammals, domestic cats and commercial poultry. The virus was first discovered in China’s Guangdong province in 1996.
Public health officials, epidemiologists and infectious disease researchers worry it would only take a minor mutation in the virus now circulating in dairy cows and commercial poultry to enable it to spread easily between people, or cause serious illness, or both. The more opportunities the virus has to move between individual animals or jump into new species, the greater the likelihood such changes could occur.
In December 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in response to H5N1 and said he wanted to make sure that “Californians have access to accurate, up-to-date information” about the disease.
The state did release information on outbreaks at poultry facilities and in wild animals at the county level. But it did not do so for dairy outbreaks.
Agriculture officials described the infected cattle only as being in “the Central Valley” — an area encompassing roughly 20,000 square miles — or Southern California — a roughly 56,000 square mile area.
More than 770 dairies in California have been infected since the outbreak began in 2024.
Such vague information is “completely useless in terms of trying to figure out how the flu is spreading around,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization in Canada.
“It’s a bit mystifying why that information isn’t clear and transparent,” she said. “I mean, when you’re dealing with an outbreak that has major implications in terms of both people’s livelihoods and in terms of the nation’s food supply, to not be more transparent about that, I think is actually really harmful in the long run, because it’s like, what are you guys doing? Like, why are you keeping this a secret?”
Cremins, the attorney, said it’s possible infections among dairy workers could have been avoided had location information been shared, because groups like his and “other members of the public” could have targeted “outreach and education to at-risk workers and communities.”
The plaintiffs also allege in their filing that the agriculture department’s “refusal to disclose the locations of H5N1 outbreaks … perpetuated a stark and unjustifiable information asymmetry: CDFA (the ag agency) and dairy producers know where and when bird flu outbreaks are occurring; CRLA (the legal organization), dairy workers, and the broader public do not.”
Other states, including Michigan, Arizona and Nevada, reported outbreaks at the county level.
The plaintiffs are seeking disclosure of quarantine records, a declaration from a judge that the agriculture agency violated the state’s open record laws, and — should they succeed — payment of attorney’s fees.
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