By Sara Zaske
The bird flu is not just in birds anymore. The virus H5N1 is spreading rapidly in dairy cows — and sometimes jumping to the people who work with them. Washington State University’s Murrow College of Communication researchers are helping tailor messages to reach dairy workers to help keep them and their herds safe.
The team was tapped by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create these messages and help the nation’s Extension agents deliver them. With input from farmers and scientists, the WSU team has developed a communication toolkit for Extension agents to help dairy farmers respond to the H5N1.
“It’s important for farmers to know that there is good guidance available,” said Erica Austin, WSU communication professor. “Information on H5N1 is evolving, but there’s a place to go that will have the up-to-date information and that it will be clear and concise, and their local Extension professionals can be relied on to help translate that information.”
Austin is the lead principal investigator on the project funded by a $90,000 USDA grant. The Murrow team was chosen in part because of their previous COVID-19 messaging work. They will continue to collaborate on this project with EXCITE, an interagency effort between the USDA and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention focused on health in rural and other underserved communities.
Before developing the H5N1 materials, the researchers first conducted listening sessions to hear farmers’ concerns first-hand.
“Dairy farmers are the experts. We want to know what their values are and what information they need to keep their farm healthy and safe,” said Nicole O’Donnell, a communication researcher who specializes in health promotion. “We then incorporate that into our messages which is really key.”
Team members Paul Bolls and Yen-I Lee, co-directors of the Murrow Media Mind Lab, are focusing on creating “brain friendly” communication on the latest science about the virus, making sure it is easily accessible to a non-scientific audience.
In situations with a lot of unknowns and changing scientific recommendations, misinformation can fill the gaps, so it is important to give people tools to assess information, Bolls recently told a group of national Extension agents.
“We want people to be media and science literate — to engage and think critically about information and evaluate sources,” he said. “Because it empowers them to make evidence-based decisions that will help them navigate this situation more effectively.”
Since the discovery in March 2024 that H5N1 had jumped from birds to dairy cattle in Texas, the spread among herds has increased rapidly. By the end of December 2024, the virus had infected more than 915 herds in 16 states — more than double the amount the previous month, according to the USDA. Related infections of human workers at dairy and poultry farms have been relatively low with about 58 confirmed cases as of mid-December.
The good news is that infections among cows and humans usually result in treatable sickness, not death as it has in birds.
The milk supply is also safe — provided it is pasteurized — and that is one of the messages the WSU team hopes to get to the general public with the help of dairy farmers.
“Farmers are right there at the front line. They’ve been using pasteurization for 100 years, and they know how to safely produce their product,” said O’Donnell.
Raw milk is another matter. Sale of raw milk is permitted in some states including Washington, and it is often promoted on social media as having health benefits. But if a dairy cow has H5N1, raw milk can also contain large amounts of the virus. For the dairy farms, this means careful handling of milk before it is pasteurized. There are also recommended protocols for use of personal protective equipment or PPE for workers, which are scaled up depending on whether workers are caring for cows infected with the virus.
Source : wsu.edu