November 8, 2026 By Merritt Clifton 4 Comments
Bird flu is back, deadly as ever. Raw milkers may be especially at risk. – Animals 24-7
Thus far little noticed, 2026 West Coast bird flu pandemic did not become an election issue, but that did not mean it was not underway
YAKIMA, Washington––Out of sight, out of mind for most Americans during the 2026 election season, H5N1 avian influenza is nonetheless back, wreaking havoc among both farmed animals from hens to mink, wildlife from the Pacific Northwest to Antarctica, and killing at least one human so far.
That victim, a dairy farm worker in Yakima County, Washington who died on November 1, 2026 was said by the Yakima County Health District to have had unspecified “underlying health conditions.”
48% human case fatality rate
The Yakima County victim was the third known U.S human death from H5N1, among around 1,000 deaths worldwide since the disease was first identified in humans in Hong Kong in 1996. About half of the human deaths came in 2003-2025.
The numbers of human deaths are so far less alarming than the known human case fatality rate of 48%, according to World Health Organization data.
Spread mostly by migratory waterfowl, H5N1, a variety of the disease family known as HPAI for “high pathogenic avian influenza,” attacks humans most often through intensive exposure to infected poultry, cattle, and farmed mink, secondarily through consumption infected animal products and byproducts.
94,200 hens in one Oregon flock
“The Pacific Northwest and California have seen an uptick of bird flu cases — and the death of a Yakima County, Washington person who became infected,” updated Kyle Odegard on November 5, 2026 for the Salem, Oregon-based agricultural industry newspaper Capital Press.
“Highly pathogenic avian influenza has been detected in a poultry flock in Oregon,” Odegard warned. “The new case,” bringing the preventive killing of 94,200 hens in an egg-laying flock, “pushed the state’s death toll from the virus past one million domestic birds.
“Since the start of the global HPAI outbreak, bird flu has also resulted in the death of 25.5 million domestic birds in California, 4.1 million in Washington, and roughly 27,500 in Idaho,” Odegard reckoned.
“Most infections for the region have been in backyard non-poultry birds,” Odegard observed, based on USDA reports.
Cockfighting vector
“Backyard non-poultry birds” commonly translates “gamefowl,” raised in large numbers outdoors for use in illegal cockfighting. Transportation of fighting cocks has been extensively implicated in H5N1 outbreaks in enclosed poultry bans, the virus having apparently been brought in on workers’ boots and clothing.
“However,” Odegard noted, “an October 28, 2026 case affected 1.3 million birds at a commercial egg facility in Stanislaus County, California.”
Also, Odegard suggested, “The virus is running rampant in Central Washington dairy farms, with 40 herds catching HPAI in the past month.”
Mexico & Canada
Added retired paramedic Michael Coston, of Zephyrhills, Florida, posting his Avian Flu Diary blog since 2005, “Canada has reported 27 outbreaks since bird flu activity resumed in mid-September 2026, with six reports filed over the past week,” as of November 7, 2026.
Further, Coston mentioned, the Mexican National Service for Agro-Alimentary Public Health, Safety and Quality SENASICA “is reporting a large outbreak of H5N1 in Yucatán. While Mexico has reported H5N1 in wild birds recently,” Coston recalled, “this appears to be the first poultry outbreak since 2024.
“The affected farm had a population of 225,860 laying hens,” Coston said.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Raw milk warning
There was a 2026 election angle to the H5N1 outbreaks, especially on dairy farms, if anyone had been paying attention.
The American Academy of Pediatrics on October 5, 2026 renewed an annual appeal to legislators nationwide, issued since 2014, to prohibit the sale and distribution of unpasteurized milk and raw dairy products, “including certain cheeses.”
Sale of unpasteurized raw milk is currently legal in 30 of the 50 U.S. states, vigorously boosted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services under the Donald Trump presidential administration.
(See RFK Jr., named to head Health & Human Services, offers little for animals.)
“Emerging threat”
The American Academy of Pediatrics warned that raw milk products “can cause serious illness, particularly in children, pregnant people and those with weakened immune systems.”
Added new language, “An emerging threat to unpasteurized milk product consumers is highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus. Passed from wild birds to dairy cows, HPAI-A (H5N1) is an influenza A virus with the capacity for cow-to-cow transmission.
“Bovine HPAI-A (H5N1) infection results in high virus concentration in the mammary gland and the resulting milk. Unpasteurized milk from infected cows can harbor HPAI-A (H5N1) virus for up to five weeks when refrigerated. Pasteurization is effective in killing HPAI-A (H5N1); thus, only unpasteurized milk poses an infectious risk.”
Mink vector
Humane World for Animals president Kitty Block on August 26, 2026 raised a second largely ignored election season angle on the H5N1 outbreak.
Blogged Block, “Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service detected H5N1, avian influenza, on a mink fur farm in Salt Lake County, Utah. This marks the first detection of the contagious virus on a fur factory farm in the U.S.
“While avian influenza has been spreading throughout other animal agricultural operations since 2022, its discovery on a fur farm in the U.S. is of specific concern,” Block wrote.
“That’s because right now —incredibly— both the House and Senate versions of the Farm Bill include a proposal to subsidize [promotion of] this dying industry,” after a 30-year hiatus, “which has become nothing less than a biosecurity risk across the globe. From a public health perspective, it’s hard to imagine a more irresponsible giveaway.”
Glenn “G.T.” Thompson.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Documented concerns of viral spillover”
Blogged Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle earlier, on April 22, 2026, “Beyond the ethical concerns, mink farms pose documented concerns of viral spillover, including H5N1 (‘bird flu’).”
That edition of the Farm Bill on August 6, 2026 failed to clear the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry by a single vote.
The primary author of the 2026 Farm Bill, however, Republican member of the House of Representatives and House Agriculture Committee chair Glenn “G.T.” Thompson, was on November 3, 2026 re-elected in the Pennsylvania 15th Congressional District to serve a tenth consecutive two-year term.
Thompson can be expected to try to pass a Farm Bill during the “lame duck” session of the current Congress, running from November 9, 2026 until the new Congress is seated on January 3, 2027, bringing Democratic majorities to power in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Mink promotion subsidies still alive
Failing that, Thompson might also try to add the mink promotion subsidies as a last-minute rider to some other legislation, even though, as Pacelle pointed out to ANIMALS 24-7, “There’s not even a bill introduced to do this. It was inserted [into the defeated version of the Farm Bill] with legislative antecedent, and no one lawmaker took credit for it. My hunch,” Pacelle said, “is it was [put into the Farm Bill by] Tom Tiffany, an anti-animal zealot [in the “lame duck” Congress] whom we helped defeat for governor of Wisconsin.”
Aware that the resumption of the mink promotional subsidies might still be alive in the “lame duck” Congressional session, Center for a Humane Economy director of veterinary science Jim Keen, DVM, and Animal Wellness Action senior veterinarian Tom Pool, DVM, on October 26, 2026 warned the Republican and Democratic chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate agriculture committees that mink farming is a biohazard to the public.
Utah H5N1 outbreak more serious than acknowledged––and mishandled
Keen and Pool also explained that the Utah mink farm H5N1 outbreak was much more serious than was acknowledged by public officials at the time.
“Mink sampled on August 7, 2026 tested positive on August 17,” Keen and Pool wrote, while “the outbreak spread extensively through the farm, with the producer anticipating mortality approaching 80% of the captive population.
“Despite the severity of the situation, Utah authorities did not quarantine the premises, and federal and state agencies provided little public information.
“Unlike similar recent cases in Europe that prompted aggressive disease control and investigation,” Keen and Pool charged, “the Utah outbreak was characterized by limited transparency and an apparently inadequate public health response.
“Critical questions remained unanswered”
“Newly released government records revealed that officials focused heavily on financial assistance and emergency vaccination while critical questions remained unanswered about the source of infection, worker exposure, mink-to-mink transmission, and viral mutations associated with mammalian adaptation,” all of which oversights could have been deadly to the public as well as to the mink.
While the mink industry subsidies might be part of a “lame duck” session Farm Bill, Thompson’s first priority is likely to be slipping through some version of the “Save Our Bacon” or “SOB” Act, seeking to overside state authority to regulate how farmed animals are raised.
(See Pigs win U.S. Senate bean-shooter “Showdown at the Not OK Coral”.)
Meanwhile, twenty-four nations, chiefly in Europe, have now banned mink farming to minimize the risk of transmission of H5N1 from birds through mink to humans. The most recent nation to ban mink farming was Denmark, a longtime world leader in farmed mink production.
Ellison the elephant seal at Hidden Beach.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Elephant seal pups
Among the more surprising governmental responses to H5N1, reported by Erik Stokstad for Science on September 1, 2026, was the decision of the Australian Antarctic Division to evacuate a research station operated since 1948 on Macquarie Island, midway between Australia and Antarctica, “for fear that a highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 avian flu will soon reach its shores.
“The risk to human health on Macquarie Island—located in the Southern Ocean midway—is low, the agency said when announcing the move,” Stokstad wrote.
“But the virus could wipe out thousands of southern elephant seal pups born on beaches next to the station, potentially leading to psychological distress for staff.”
Similar considerations were not invoked when from 2000 to 2011 Macquarie Island research station staff participated in first massacring about 2,500 feral cats, who were blamed for killing as many as 60,000 sea birds per year, and then poisoning a feral rabbit population that exploded from circa 10,000 to more than 100,000 after the cats were gone.
Both the cats and rabbits were descended from animals left on Macquarie island by visiting whalers circa 1820.
(See When the cats are away, the mice will play––and the rats & rabbits.)
