In the report, a research team led by Frank Postberg, the Head of Planetary Sciences and Remote Sensing Professorship Planetary Sciences at Freie Universitat Berlin, said they’d found high levels of phosphorus salts residing on the moon.
Known also as sodium phosphates, scientists have revealed that these concentrations are ‘100-fold higher’ in Enceladus’ ‘plume-forming ocean waters’ than in ‘Earth’s oceans’.
The recent phosphate discovery confirms that all six essential elements of life are present on Saturn’s sixth-largest moon, thus potentially making it habitable.
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
The elements in question are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur, and phosphorus.
Speaking to Motherboard, Professor Postberg said environments that feature the six key essentials can support life, despite being far away from the sun.
He said: “Enceladus was already considered a pretty habitable place before this.
“The conditions in the ocean seem to be good for life. There are very likely hydrothermal vent systems at the bottom of the ocean that would be an energy source, so you don’t need sunlight.”
Space Telescope Science Institute
He continued to say that on Enceladus, there is also a variety of ‘organic compounds’ that a previously-conducted study had already detected.
The study concludes that Enceladus has satisfied ‘what is generally considered to be the strictest requirement of habitability’.
The findings also suggest that the moon’s ocean ‘could be a harbinger of high phosphorus availability in subsurface oceans across most of the outer Solar System’.
Following the publication of his team’s findings, Professor Postberg said we could investigate Enceladus with the technology currently available to us.
“This was basically the last piece that was needed to finally, now, deem Enceladus’ ocean to be habitable without any doubt,” he said.
“Of course, habitable does not mean inhabited. This phosphorus is not something that comes from any life form.
“It’s not produced by life. It’s just an ingredient that, at least for Earth, was essential for the emergence of life.”
He then went on to state: “We could build a spacecraft with today’s technology and send it to Enceladus to answer the question: is this habitable place actually inhabited or not?
“So with the next mission, we will very likely get an answer to that question.”
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, floated as a top pick for a potential Trump running mate, wrote in graphic detail about the day she shot and killed her family’s “untrainable” dog and an errant goat in her new book—acknowledging the political imprudence of the bizarre admission, according to The Guardian, which obtained an advance copy of the book.
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump listens as North Dakota … [+]AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
KEY FACTS
Noem decided to put down the dog, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer named Cricket, after determining it was “untrainable . . . dangerous” and “aggressive,” she reportedly wrote in “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” set to be published in the U.S. next week.
Noem “realized [she] had to put [Cricket] down” after it misbehaved on a pheasant hunt, then attacked and killed a family friend’s chicken on the way home before attempting to bite Noem when she intervened.
Noem then took Cricket to a gravel pit and shot her, she reportedly wrote.
Cricket was “the picture of pure joy,” but “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with . . . untrainable” and “less than worthless . . . as a hunting dog,” Noem wrote, adding that she “hated that dog.”
After killing Cricket, Noem “realized another unpleasant job needed to be done” and she turned her gun on one of the family’s goats, who she said was “nasty and mean,” smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” her children.
Noem reportedly wrote that she included the graphic story in her book as an example of the “difficult, messy and ugly” jobs she’s willing to do—but acknowledges “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”
Noem was raised in northeastern South Dakota, where she worked on her parents’ farm and cattle ranch prior to her entrance into politics. In her second term as governor, Noem served in the South Dakota state legislature before she was elected to Congress in 2010. Noem has been floated by pundits and media as a potential pick for Trump’s running mate, and he acknowledged to Fox News in February she was one of at least half a dozen contenders on his short list. The two appeared alongside each other at the Ohio rally in March for GOP Senate nominee Bernie Moreno, where Trump told the crowd Noem is “doing an incredible job in South Dakota.”
TANGENT
In another questionable move, Noem shot a testimonial for a Texas cosmetic dental clinic, Smile Texas, that recently gave her veneers. “They wanted to make sure that I was happy with my smile. Not only that the the bite was correct and that I liked the shape, the color, but that it was going to work for me for the rest of my life, and that it was something I could be proud of,” Noem explained in the five-minute video posted last month to her account on X, formerly known as Twitter. Noem has refused to say whether she paid for the dental work. The makeover has raised questions that she’s prepping for prime-time and changing her look in accordance with Trump’s preference for hires that look like they come from what he calls “central casting.” “The whole teeth thing almost looks like it was done for Trump to see. She is showing him she works well in front of the camera, that she has that star power he wants onstage with him, while fitting into the mode of women in the Trump universe,” Republican strategist Ron Bonjean told the New York Times. Trump himself has made allusions to Noem’s appearance, calling her “hot as a politician” during a rally in Ohio last month and telling the crowd “you know you’re not allowed to say she’s beautiful, so I’m not going to say that.”
A senior official from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said today that its nationwide survey of retail milk has found remnants of H5N1 avian flu viruses in one in five samples, with the highest concentrations in regions where outbreaks in dairy cattle have been reported.
Donald Prater, DVM, acting director of the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), shared the new findings with state health officials who took part in a scientific symposium on H5N1 hosted by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO). The results come in the wake of earlier findings this week from more limited FDA sampling, along with similar findings from a smaller set of samples tested by a lab that’s part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response (CEIRR) Network.
At today’s ASTHO briefing, state health officials heard the latest investigation and research updates from federal health officials and had the opportunity to ask their own questions, everything from virus shedding in cow manure to pandemic preparedness.
FDA’s long list of research questions
Prater reiterated that the FDA hasn’t changed its assessment that the nation’s milk supply remains safe. So far, early work on milk samples that were positive for H5N1 fragments haven’t found any viable (potentially infectious) virus.
He said, however, that the FDA still has a long list of data gaps to fill, including identifying the risk of infection to humans via oral consumption and validating that existing pasteurization methods can inactivate H5N1.
Other data gaps include how long the virus survives in raw milk and the infectious dose of viruses. Though a major concern is retail milk, Prater also said the FDA needs to see if contamination is occurring in other products, such as cheese made from raw milk.
USDA continues to probe farm transmission patterns
Rosemary Sifford, DVM, deputy administrator for veterinary services and chief veterinarian with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) said the agency has now shared 260 genetic sequences with public databases, up from 239 earlier this week. Of those, only 1 had a mutation linked to mammalian adaptation.
She also said the B3.13 genome circulating in cattle was first seen in poultry in the middle of March in a Texas flock at a time when the virus was cropping up in some of the state’s dairy farms. Sifford said investigators continue to look at how the virus is moving on farms and how it transmits among cattle.
Scientists are looking for the virus in other species, including feral pigs, and regular influenza surveillance is monitoring the situation in commercial pigs. Sifford said efforts are under way to gauge how long infected cows shed the virus and if shedding patterns are any different in asymptomatic animals.
When asked about on-farm transmission, she said scientists haven’t observed significant shedding in cow feces. Meanwhile, sampling from the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) found the highest concentrations in milk and mammary tissue.
CDC notes cat infections, weighs risks
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials shared more details from their epidemiologic investigations, including virus findings in other animals on affected dairy farms. Sonja Olsen, PhD, associate director for preparedness and response with the CDC’s Influenza Division, said there were 6 H5N1 positive tests in cats from three states: 3 in Texas, 2 in New Mexico, and 1 in Ohio.
Also, there were 5 H5N1 detections in wild birds on the farms.
She said CDC a key question is the infection risk from exposure to milk and whether certain conditions, such as aerosolization, pose a higher risk.
Vivien Duggan, PhD, who heads the CDC’s Influenza Division, said the interagency Flu Risk Management group, which formed 15 years ago, is meeting now to discuss prepandemic vaccines and diagnostics.
On the research front, the CDC is looking for any changes in the virus that would hamper the ability to use countermeasures, such as antiviral drugs and vaccines.
A key tool that the CDC uses to evaluate and prioritize resources is the Influenza Risk Assessment Tool (IRAT), in which its experts grade the virus using 10 data criteria. Duggan said the CDC is still gathering some data and that it will take some time to evaluate the virus and come up with a risk score. In its last assessment in July 2023, the agency scored the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b virus from a Spanish mink farm outbreak as slightly higher for some elements than a 2022 virus from the same clade from wild birds.
Latest on vaccines, other countermeasures
So far, research results have been promising for antiviral susceptibility. And for the two candidate vaccine viruses against the H5N1 2.3.4.4b clade, experiments using ferret antisera show good cross-reaction against the outbreak strain, she said.
When state officials asked what would trigger ramped up H5N1 vaccine production, Duggan said officials are watching for certain cues, such as change in mammalian transmission, better adaptation to human-to-human spread, and clusters of cases. “There’s no formula, but we’re all on the watch.”
Health officials also heard from government countermeasure experts, who said they don’t foresee any issues with the antiviral supply chain.
State health officials had several questions about where things stand with a candidate vaccine. David Boucher, PhD, director of infectious disease preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Strategic Preparedness, said there is a limited quantity of prefilled syringes and vials that are used for clinical trials, for example. He added that health officials are already looking at regulatory pathways to use the vaccine more widely, if needed.
He said the first wave of production, if needed, could provide several hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses, and the second tranche could amount to 10 million doses. “Any pivot from that would require additional resources,” Boucher said. “If we need to pull any of those levers, we’re willing to do so.”
Partnering with established seasonal flu vaccine producers has the benefit of a licensed platform in place that can be easily adapted to include an H5N1 vaccine virus, but he acknowledged that a downside would be a potential disruption in seasonal flu vaccine production. “There are a lot of variables that go into making that decision.”
Two safety and immunogenicity studies are already under way on candidate H5N1 vaccines, Boucher told the group.
After spending years working and living in Africa, I have learned you cannot take anything for granted. Even though foreign navies and coast guards exist on paper, that does not mean they have boats that float and work. Even if they do have boats that float and work, that does not mean they have fuel or spare parts. Even if the boats are able to regularly operate, that does not mean they put a dent in maritime crime because maritime law enforcement is only one component of a government effectively policing its waters.
In December 2022, U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Aaron Delano-Johnson and U.S. Navy Cmdr. Chris Bernotavicius published an article in War on the Rocks where they argued that the U.S. government should more aggressively confront Chinese illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing practices across the globe. Unlike current U.S. strategies, the authors consider these practices a “coercive tool of Chinese statecraft” and frame them as a component of strategic competition. Delano-Johnson and Bernotavicius propose that the U.S. Coast Guard, due to the service’s unique capabilities and relationships, lead efforts against Chinese fishers by helping partner governments to develop more effective maritime enforcement capabilities that ideally become self-sufficient.
This proposal, however, takes the functioning of other state institutions for granted and fails to address the larger problems that facilitate harmful Chinese fishing practices.
Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in general and Chinese fishing practices in particular do pose significant threats to international and U.S. national security. Meaningfully addressing these threats, however, would require a more robust response than what Delano-Johnson and Bernotavicius propose. A more effective U.S. approach should more directly confront the system of factors that prevent a foreign government from effectively policing its waters. In addition to maritime enforcement, two other significant factors include corruption and economic coercion. All these factors significantly impact many U.S. partner governments’ ability to police their waters, and focusing on maritime enforcement while failing to address corruption and coercion would likely result in a failure to effectively push back against harmful fishing practices even if the U.S. Coast Guard is able to train a perfect foreign counterpart.
Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing practices, particularly as practiced by the Chinese fishing fleet, pose multiple threats to international and U.S. national security. These practices often lead to overfishing, which depletes local fishing stocks and makes it difficult for the poorest in costal countries to afford the fish they rely on as their primary source of protein. Overfishing depresses local fishing industries, eliminating the livelihoods of many of the same people. These practices also challenge global norms and infringe upon the sovereignty of any country in which they occur.
The Chinese government heavily subsidizes the Chinese distant-water fishing fleet, which is the largest in the world and often engages in illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. The Chinese government further aids this fleet by coercing foreign governments to minimize enforcement against Chinese vessels, and it uses many of the same fishing vessels as part of its maritime militia, which operates in waters closer to home.
The 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy mentions the necessity for U.S. support to allies and partners that “stand on the frontlines of the [People’s Republic of China] coercion and are rightly determined to seek to ensure their own autonomy, security, and prosperity.” Governments that suffer from illegal Chinese fishing practices are on the frontlines of daily Chinese government coercion and threats to autonomy, security, and prosperity.
Challenges to Enforcement
There are many challenges that enable illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing practices beyond poor maritime enforcement. Two main challenges include corruption and susceptibility to economic coercion, and both of these permeate through many of the countries the U.S. government wants to help combat such practices.
A government’s ability to police its exclusive economic zone, 200 nautical miles from its coastline, neither starts nor stops on the water. Before maritime enforcement takes place, governments pass laws, participate in international agreements, and issue permits to regulate how fishing should be conducted. Should a navy or coast guard apprehend illegal fishers, a government’s criminal justice system levies punishments to disincentivize further violations.
Corruption is pervasive throughout the global fishing industry and undermines regulation through bribes to politicians who oversee the process, officials who issue fishing permits, law enforcement personnel, investigators, prosecutors, and judges, among others. Fighting corruption presents a significant challenge to a majority of the partners the U.S. government wants to engage with to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. The October 2022 U.S. Interagency Working Group on Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing’s National 5-Year Strategy for Combatting Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing lists 57 priority countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Ocean where U.S. government assistance is most needed. The World Bank assessed 50 of these 57 priority countries in 2021. Thirty of them scored in the bottom 50th percentile for control of corruption, and 17 of those scored in the bottom 25th percentile.
As an example, Ghana is one of the U.S. government’s strongest partners in West Africa, one of the strategy’s priority countries, and scored just above the 50th percentile for control of corruption, making it an above-average country. The Environmental Justice Foundation, a British non-governmental organization, found in an October 2022 study about the Chinese-owned fishing fleet in Ghana that a “culture of corruption” exists throughout the official Ghanaian fishing management system. The majority of the Ghanian fishing sector personnel who the foundation interviewed had witnessed corruption from port authorities, members of the navy, and official government fishing observers.
Furthermore, according to a January 2023 BBCstory, most of the Ghanian government fishing observers take bribes due to “fear, corruption, and neglect.” The neglect the article is referring to is that the government is paying these observers meager salaries infrequently, if at all, driving them to seek alternate sources of income to make a living and support their families. In my experience, this form of neglect among government workers is common throughout much of Africa and often leads to corruption out of economic necessity. Ghana’s relatively high scores in controlling corruption make it likely that corruption would pose an even greater challenge when trying to confront illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in a majority of the working group’s priority countries.
The Chinese government adds to these difficulties, making its support to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing particularly acute. With the second-largest economy in the world, the Chinese government uses its significant power and influence to coerce governments into minimizing enforcement against Chinese fishing vessels. As Delano-Johnson and Bernotavicius point out, one way the Chinese government does this is by forcing governments to choose between prosecuting Chinese fishing vessels or accepting Chinese aid. “It’s hard to say no to China when they are building your roads,” as one former head of Senegal’s Oceanic Research Institute puts it. Senegal is one of five “flag states” that the working group’s strategy designates as a focus of U.S. government-to-government engagement to counter illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.
Many of the strategy’s priority countries are also underdeveloped, making them vulnerable to coercion with foreign aid. The United Nations assessed 49 of the strategy’s 57 priority countries in 2021. Twenty-one of them, including Ghana, are in the medium human development category. Eight, including Senegal, are in the low human development category. These are the two lowest human development categories of four.
Challenges to Self-Sufficiency
Pervasive corruption and susceptibility to economic coercion would make it extremely difficult for Delano-Johnson and Bernotavicius’ solution to become self-sufficient. They propose that the U.S. Coast Guard’s maritime security cooperation efforts be modeled after the Department of State’s Global Peace Operations Initiative, but this initiative is also unlikely lead to lead self-sufficiency. Its primary goal is to help partner militaries develop forces that contribute to U.N. peacekeeping operations, and the authors provide examples of notable successes. The successes, however, rely on the United Nations to pay governments directly for their troop contributions.
For maritime enforcement capabilities to reach true self-sufficiency, countries need a reliable internal source of income. Some portion of this income could come from governments issuing fishing licenses and imposing fines on guilty illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishers. The governments, however, must be capable of effectively doing both to collect enough revenue to pay for the operations. Corruption and economic coercion undermine these processes.
An ineffective system to effectively punish illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishers could also create motivation and morale problems within a maritime force, no matter how well-trained, further hindering its performance. To paraphrase what a senior African counterpart once told me, “Why should military members risk their lives on the high seas to catch illegal fishers if they know the fishers will just be let free when they are pulled into port?” In other words, if the navy or coast guard knows nothing will happen to any illegal fishers they catch, then why should they bother patrolling their country’s waters?
Finally, government leaders must want to maintain a capability before the capability can become self-sufficient. One adage of security cooperation is “you can’t want it more than they do.” For any maritime security cooperation to bear long-term dividends and produce capable maritime forces after U.S. trainers leave, host-nation government and military leaders must want to maintain the forces. If government leaders are gaining financially through corruption or politically through economic aid, then they may have little to no motivation to start enforcing fishing regulations and see their income and political support disappear.
A More Holistic Solution
The U.S. Coast Guard is the right organization to lead security cooperation efforts against Chinese illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing practices. Focusing on security cooperation without addressing the other issues that prevent partner governments from effectively policing their waters may result in short-term success but would likely result in long-term failure. Instead, other agencies, like the Department of State or U.S. Agency for International Development, should lead a more holistic approach to challenge Chinese fishing practices at sea as well as challenge corruption within the fishing industry and propose viable alternatives to Chinese economic coercion.
A more effective U.S. approach would seek to change the incentives for enough partner government officials to want to effectively police a country’s waters and maintain a maritime enforcement capability after U.S. trainers leave. Many of these officials would likely not be in the military, like fishing observers and judges.
The Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development specialize in conducting holistic approaches to security issues due to their unique capabilities and relationships. They work with foreign governments to decrease corruption and improve criminal justice systems. The U.S. Agency for International Development’s specialty is economic development, which would likely be necessary to provide viable alternatives to Chinese economic coercion. The Biden administration’s “Memorandum on Combatting Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing and Associated Labor Abuses,” released four months prior to the working group’s strategy, calls on the U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator to lead anti-corruption and judicial reform efforts as well. The Department of State works regularly with and funds U.S. Coast Guard and military security cooperation efforts, like the Global Peace Operations Initiative, and it has a bureau that specializes in training police and strengthening criminal justice institutions. The Department of State also recently opened the Office of China Coordination to manage U.S. competition with China.
Conclusion
The Chinese government uses subsidies and coercion to enable the Chinese distant-water fishing fleet to conduct illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing across the globe. These activities represent a direct threat to the rules-based international system, and they occur daily in multiple countries that have a minimal capacity to push back and have structural governance issues that disincentivize them from doing so. These illegal fishing activities also represent a daily threat to the lives and livelihoods of the poorest citizens within these countries.
For the U.S. government to more effectively push back against harmful Chinese fishing practices and help create indigenous, self-sustaining maritime enforcement capabilities, it should not focus its efforts primarily on maritime security cooperation led by the U.S. Coast Guard. Instead, the U.S. government should address the system of factors that enable illegal Chinese fishing practices, including government corruption and Chinese economic coercion as well as maritime enforcement. A more holistic approach would likely have to be led by a more holistic agency that already addresses similar issues, such as the Department of State or U.S. Agency for International Development.
More aggressively pushing back against Chinese illegal fishing practices is an opportunity for the U.S. government to highlight its global leadership in a way that directly defends the rules-based international order, challenges its most capable global competitor, helps rehabilitate the maritime environment, and increases the food security and economic opportunity for some of the world’s poorest and most helpless people. But Chinese fishers are not the only ones that engage in illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, and the U.S. government should not take its own institutions and those of its partners and allies for granted. The U.S. government should also ensure it is effectively pushing back against the lesser but not insignificant numbers of American, allied, and partner fishers who conduct the same activities. To truly defend the rules-based order against all violators, the U.S. government should ensure U.S. fishers follow the rules, and it should be willing to defend the rules from its best friends and most fierce competitors alike.
Michael E. Clark is an active-duty U.S. Marine lieutenant colonel, F/A-18 weapons systems officer, and Africa foreign area officer.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or U.S. Marine Corps.
The Agriculture Department is ordering the dairy industry to test milk-producing cows for infections from highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI H5N1, before they’re moved between states, federal officials announced Wednesday.
USDA’s move to ramp up testing requirements for HPAI H5N1 comes after the Food and Drug Administration disclosed Tuesday that samples of pasteurized milk that had been sold on grocery store shelves had tested positive for the virus, prompting further research to verify if the positive test was caused by lingering dead “virus particles” or live infectious virus.
It also comes after federal authorities say they have now spotted some “isolated” but worrying changes to the virus in cows, which are believed by U.S. officials to have contracted the virus from wild birds.
State veterinarians and labs that find that cattle have tested positive for the virus will be required to report their results to the USDA. Farms with cows that are sick will need to undergo investigations before moving cattle across state lines.
“The primary focus of the order, initially, will be lactating cattle. But we will certainly have the opportunity to expand beyond that as necessary,” Mike Watson, head of the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, told reporters Wednesday.
“We should be very clear that the tests that came back positive are for the genetic material of the virus. This could just be virus fragments, what’s left over after pasteurization. And so this by itself is not a reason for alarm,” said Dr. Céline Gounder, a CBS News medical contributor and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News. “There are additional tests being done to see is this live infectious virus or is this just the dead virus we would expect to see.”
If this is simply the leftovers after the pasteurization process, “you should not get sick,” Gounder added.
Officials previously said that the unprecedented spread of the virus among dairy cattle likely traces to a single spillover event from wild birds, based on an analysis of genetic sequences collected from sick cattle.
Since then, genetic data and investigations suggest the virus has spread to infect cows across at least eight states and a human dairy worker in Texas. Egg farms from Texas and Michigan are also suspected to have been infected by virus that spread from cows, adding to millions of poultry culled because of infections from wild birds.
“Those farms have been in close proximity to affected dairy farms. And so there could be lateral flow from the dairy farms to these poultry operations, to these egg laying operations. This could be such things as transfer of the virus through fomites, such as on clothing or on vehicles,” National Milk Producers Federation chief science officer Jamie Jonker said at recent Swine Health Information Center webinar.
The virus was not initially found in the respiratory tract of most infected cows, officials said, suggesting it is not spreading through the air between cows like other kinds of influenza. Instead, H5N1 HPAI in the current outbreak has been found almost exclusively in raw milk and the cow organs that produce it. Officials think the virus may have spread between cows during the milking process on farms, through surfaces contaminated with infected raw milk.
However, Watson said that at least one cow headed to slaughter has now been found with signs of the virus in its lung tissue. The cow was condemned by USDA inspectors and did not enter the food supply, Watson said.
Federal scientists have also found a mutation in another sick cow from Kansas that had a genetic change that adapted the flu to spread better in mammals.
“The one sequence shift and the one dairy cow with H5N1 in the lung tissue so far appear to be isolated events. However, the novel movement of H5N1 between wild birds and dairy cows requires further testing,” Watson said.
Cows mostly have been recovering from the virus without dying, Watson said. That’s in stark contrast to the kind of mass die-offs seen in birds and some other species. However, dairy industry officials have previously said some cows have yet to recover their ability to produce milk, raising concerns of long-term issues for some cattle.
“We need time to develop an understanding to support any future courses of action. So this federal order is critical to increasing the information available for USDA,” said Watson.
H5N1 HPAI virus found in pasteurized milk
While health authorities say they think previous work pasteurizing eggs for HPAI H5N1 and milk for other germs suggests the process will be enough to eradicate the danger from any lingering traces of the virus found in milk, they say studies are also ongoing now to verify that pasteurized milk remains safe.
“A positive PCR test does not necessarily mean that the sample contains an intact infectious pathogen and that additional testing is required to determine whether intact pathogen is still present and if it remains infectious,” Don Prater, head of the FDA’s food safety center, said at the news briefing.
This involves what FDA says is the “gold standard” for checking if the virus that they found is potentially infectious, taking the H5N1 HPAI particles they found and seeing if it will grow in chicken eggs.
Research backed by the National Institutes of Health has also found H5N1 HPAI fragments in milk. Early testing of those samples suggests the virus in the pasteurized milk was not infectious, trying to grow the virus in cells and chicken eggs.
“While this is welcome news, the effort studied a small number of samples that is not necessarily representative of all retail milk. So to really understand the scope here, we need to wait for the FDA,” said National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo.
Prater said that the samples had come from a national survey of the U.S. milk supply, but declined to share details of where they had been found and what kinds of milk have tested positive.
“We don’t have information yet to share but it will be coming out very shortly and that’s what I can share at this point,” said Prater.
Milk from cows known to be sick with symptoms of the virus is not entering the supply chain, Prater said. But it is possible that the virus could be making it into the supply chain from other sources, Prater said, possibly from cows that are not yet symptomatic or have previously recovered.
FDA has some data that could help investigators trace where the milk with the virus made it into the food supply, Prater said.
“Right now we will be able to look at information that we are collecting as part of this. Our traceability information is good, but it’s not perfect,” said Prater.
WASHINGTON, USA — Two agencies officially announced Thursday their plans to restore a population of grizzly bears to the North Cascade Mountains.
The National Park Service (NPS) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife will seek to move three to seven grizzly bears a year over five to 10 years to establish an initial population of 25 grizzly bears. The animals will be translocated from ecosystems in the Rocky Mountains and Interior British Columbia, according to a press release.
Grizzly bears were native to the North Cascades for thousands of years but disappeared mostly due to hunting by humans. The last confirmed sighting of a grizzly bear in the U.S. portion of the North Cascades Mountains was in 1996. The North Cascades ecosystem is roughly 9,800 square miles, which is larger than the state of New Jersey, and home to some of the most intact wildlands in the contiguous U.S., according to the release.
The bears served as a key part of the North Cascades ecosystem, distributing native plant seeds and keeping other wildlife populations in balance, according to the NPS.
“We are going to once again see grizzly bears on the landscape, restoring an important thread in the fabric of the North Cascades,” said Superintendent of the North Cascades National Park Service Complex Don Striker.
The process to restore the grizzly bear population was the subject of much public input, with 12,000 comments submitted on the NPS’s draft environmental impact statement in 2023. The plans have been unpopular with people who live around the North Cascades National Park, including residents in Newhalem, and farther east into Central Washington.
There is no set timeline for when the translocation of grizzly bears to the North Cascades ecosystem will begin. The NPS will provide updates to the public as plans develop.
A Wyoming hunter has been cited after chasing and injuring a wolf on his snowmobile, taping their mouth shut, bringing them to his home and a bar, before killing them. It’s time to ban the use of snowmobiles and motorized vehicles to chase and kill wolves.
Wolf killing in Wyoming isn’t ethical hunting or necessary “wildlife management” – it’s animal cruelty and should be punished as such. Take action now against this cruel form of hunting.
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Ban the use of Snowmobiles and Other Vehicles to Chase Down and Kill Wolves
Dear [Decision Maker],
Thank you for acknowledging that cruelty to any wildlife is unacceptable, and denouncing the brutal torture and killing of the young wolf.
I am reaching out to urge you to ban the use of snowmobiles and other motorized vehicles including aircraft, automotive vehicles, trailers, motor-propelled wheeled vehicles, or other vehicles designed for travel over snow for the purposes of chasing down and killing wolves in the state of Wyoming.
Wildlife policies that legalize and liberalize the cruel killing of native predators only breed further vitriol and hatred towards these animals; they don’t accomplish any management goals.
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This cruel event should encourage Wyoming legislators and wildlife advocates to band together and ban the use of snowmobiles and other motorized vehicles to kill wolves in Wyoming and other states.
Sincerely, [Your Name] [Your Address] [City, State ZIP] [Your Email]
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