Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture

Good afternoon, everyone, and happy New Year. I'm pleased that this joint committee hearing, our first of the year, is moving forward. And we're gathered here today for a critical discussion on the response to the avian flu, strengthening biosecurity and disease monitoring systems here in California. We stand at a crossroads, one that demands vigilance, swift action and collaboration.

The avian Influenza is not just a crisis for farmers. It is a test of our state's resilience, our food security, and our ability to protect both animal and human health. The virus knows no borders. It spreads, it disrupts, it threatens. It has already devastated poultry and dairy operations.

It has put immense strain on our biosecurity measures and raised alarms among public health officials across the country. Consumers, too, are feeling the impact, with egg prices climbing as supply struggles to keep up. But today, we meet this challenge head on. We will hear from experts, from those on the front lines, and from stakeholders who will provide insight into the current situation and the steps being taken to contain this outbreak and to prevent the next one.

Before we begin, I want to acknowledge that Chair Senator Menjivar for the Senate Health Committee is unable to join us today due to unforeseen circumstances. However, we are joined here today with Senator Suzette Valladares. I think I pronounced it correctly, Vice Chair of the Senate Health Committee. I would now like to invite her to share some welcoming remarks.

Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you, Madam Chair. So, first of all, a big thank you to the Chairs of the Senate Health and Senate Agriculture Committees for holding this important hearing. And of course, thanks to our distinguished panelists. We're looking forward to hear, looking forward to hearing your insights.

As legislators, it's critical that we understand the real world impact of the Avian Flu, especially on our most vulnerable communities. I hope today's discussion gives us a deeper understanding of what's happening on the ground and how can we can respond effectively. But before we dive into that, Madam Chair, Senator Hurtado, I would like to say happy birthday, and may your day be filled with fewer outbreaks, fewer hearings, and maybe even a cake that doesn't require a legislative vote. Wishing you a great day.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. I look forward to celebrating today and tomorrow. It seems like I've been celebrating all week. But thank you. Okay, so we'll go ahead and move to panel one. If panel one can come up and sit up at the front. We will begin with our first panel, which will focus on California's response and the measures we must take to strengthen our biosecurity.

Panelists will speak in the order outlined in the agenda and questions will follow at the end of the section. And our first panelists, we have Secretary Karen Ross with the Department of Food and Agriculture, and we'll discuss the state's response efforts and the steps necessary to protect our agricultural sector.

Madam Chair, permission to do opening remarks?

I will go ahead and allow for opening remarks for Committee Members that just joined, and then we can move along thereafter.

Thank you. My apologies for the delay. Stuck in the elevator there briefly. Originally, this was set to be an agricultural committee hearing to discuss the implications of the Avian Flu and the impact it's having on our food supplies. It has been switched to be more focused on the effect of humans.

But since the Avian Flu began, approximately 11 poultry facilities have been placed under quarantine since the end of November in my district. All infected poultry facilities, which include chicken, turkey for meat, chicken for eggs, and duck, have been depopulated. All the positive cases resulted in the euthanasia of entire flocks.

Statewide, that number is 166 million birds, with 30 million just since January. This has caused other issues as it relates to the disposal of these birds since they need to be deep buried or composted. Both are difficult during the winter months. Another alternative would be burning them. However, that is nearly impossible due to the Air Board standards.

There have been 144 dairies affected in my district since mid November of 2024, with approximately 75,000 animals being quarantined due to the virus. Good news is that they can be treated. However, it does affect the milk production, which in turn affects supply.

There have also been cases of lost calves, which further pressures the production of dairy across the entire state. $10 billion in agricultural products are produced in my district alone on a yearly basis. While the effects of the virus on humans is important, we cannot lose sight of the impacts that the loss of production has had on our food supply. And I know our Chair of Agriculture knows this very well.

We need to find solutions to make our flocks and herds more resilient to the disease so that we don't need to euthanize as many birds. Eggs are a staple of many households and they simply cannot afford to pay the nine or $10 a dozen for eggs. Our constituents deserve better. As we enter into chick season, we know that a lot of Californians are looking to alternatives to egg production at home and in homesteads.

I know that I'm going to be doing quite a bit of education in my district to help new chick owners beware of the avian flu and some of the diseases that can be contracted by these new flocks. And I hope today that we will, as we talk about the impact on humans, we will also intertwine that impact on our industry as a whole. Thank you, Madam President, for your time.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. And we have Senator McNerney. Welcome to the Senate Ag Committee, our first hearing. And feel free to begin with your opening remarks.

Thank the Chairwoman. I also want to thank the state and local agencies and ag enthusiasts and stakeholders for being here today to discuss this issue. I represent San Joaquin County, which has a significant rich agricultural economy, including poultry farms, dairies, and other livestock.

Bird flu has inflicted economic harm on poultry farmers in my district, with eight outbreaks resulting in nearly 700,000 birds being culled. More recently, bird flu has become a bigger problem for our dairy farmers, with dairy cow milk testing positive with the virus. The bird flu also poses a public health risk to farm workers. There's been three human cases in San Joaquin County. I'm anxious to learn more from you about what is being done to prevent public health, protect the livelihood of farmers, and lower the cost of eggs. Thank you. And I yield back.

Senator Cortese or Senator Wiener, would you like to provide opening remarks? Okay. We'll begin with Senator Wiener.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Looking forward to the hearing today. And thank you. And I think one of the reasons this hearing is important because, unfortunately, the federal government, our new administration, is basically taking a wrecking ball to basically all scientific expertise in the federal government, but public health in particular.

They, you know, they say accidentally, but fired the avian flu experts and had a scramble to rehire them. You know, transitioning from animals to human beings. It's unclear to me that we're going to have a flu shot this year since they canceled the first advisory committee hearing at the FDA.

And so we have a federal administration that has, they're not doing anything about the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico. It's, I refer to this as the Make America Sick Again agenda. And I am very, very concerned that this administration is hollowing out the federal expertise needed to fight or prevent the avian flu outbreak that we see become something much worse. And so that means that California needs to do even more.

We already do great public health work in California, and I'm proud that this state prioritizes science and facts and public health and vaccines and all of that. And we're going to need to step it up even more. And it's going to be devastating for the country to have a president and HHS secretary who think it's okay for people to get sick. But it is an opportunity, an unfortunate opportunity.

I don't want to have this opportunity, but it's an important opportunity for California to step up yet again and show that we are the epicenter of scientific innovation and health innovation. And so I think it's important for us to seize the moment, and we can help not just our residents, but the whole country. So thank you.

Thank you. Senator Cortese.

Yeah, thank you, Chair Hurtado, and thank you to the two committees and Chairs for the leadership to pull this together on a timely basis. I guess when these things come up, we always wish that timely meant that somehow we were able to preempt where we are right now. But in this case, I think this really is a timely response, given the observation that had to take place, the science behind it, and the development of the avian flu in terms of where it is now.

I do want to just associate a minute or so of comments with our colleague from San Francisco, Senator Wiener, with regard to the importance of this in the context of federal cuts, but not so much in terms of direct criticism about those cuts. But the fact that we are ostensibly the fifth largest economy in the world and the convergence of things now that are starting to impact our ability to maintain that status. Import, export restrictions and things like this come along on top of all that, and you look at it and say, well, perhaps this is something we can do something about.

We may or may not be able to have direct control over tariffs and taxes and, you know, one out of every six federal dollars that come from California not being returned to California. But what we can do is deal with this that's right on top of us right now.

And we have the expertise, I think, that we're going to hear from today to, to help guide us on what the next steps would be and how the Legislature could be of assistance. So I'm very, you know, very eager and anxious at the same time to hear more today. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Senator Cortese. Senator Rubio.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I'm also excited. I think all of us have the same concerns, especially as it pertains to the big picture, and that is all the cuts that are coming down. I know that sometimes we invest now for something that can happen 10 years from now, and I not sure that the new administration understands why we need to have extra people working on things today. So when you talk about issues, I really want to see, you know, what it looks like in the future. So with that lens, you know, I'm eager to hear what you have to say. Thank you.

Thank you for the opening statements and the comments. We'll go ahead and go back to our panel. And with that, Secretary Ross, feel free to begin when you're ready.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Vice Chair and Members of both Committees. I'm very pleased to be here today. It's important for us to have this kind of opportunity to share information, to understand where it started and the great work that has been happening very collaboratively across our agencies.

I feel very fortunate we're surrounding CDPH right now, but I feel very fortunate that it's a long standing working relationship. And I do, at the top of my comments, want to say I'm just going to... Well, I'm going to try to only talk for a couple of minutes to let the real experts talk.

But I think that it is important to remind everyone that the comments that were just made about the investments we make now for 10 years from now, and that's what I really want to focus on from a zoonotic disease approach and a One Health approach, which is a more integrated system.

I feel so fortunate to be the secretary in the State of California where that's been our practice. We've been doing that probably even before we called it One Health. But I'm a big believer in that and in the investments we've made in food safety, which is also tied very much to food security. So I just wanted to say that in my introduction. Just as a reminder, as everyone knows, the nationwide outbreak of high path avian Influenza actually began in 2022.

So this is not our first year of suffering through this, but it is what started as a single incident in March of 2024, where it was actually avian influenza in cattle in Texas. A single point situation that was challenging to identify at the beginning and has led to the spread of what we see across this country. Our colleagues here and our staff have been working together with planning because we had the advantage, if there was one, of how many months it was already in other parts of the country.

We had an action plan in place, which is very typical of the kinds of training that we do because of the investment of this state in emergency response, including for exotic animal diseases and other types of situations that we normally wouldn't put in the same category as wildfires or droughts and some of the other issues that we've had.

In August 30th, after that March event, is when we had that single point of introduction into the State of California. I know there may be questions about what do we know about that. We've done our part of the investigation and it's now handed off to USDA. And so there's not a lot of public comments we can make about that at this time. Since that time, we also know that In November of 2024, the high path was also identified in poultry flocks in both Tulare and in Merced County.

Since that time, despite all of the best practices we have in place, with all the scientific expertise that we have in place, it has become an unprecedented outbreak of an animal disease. I would also like to say if I'm going to be in a situation like this, I feel so fortunate for the dedicated public servants that we have at the department and all of our departments in the State of California.

Dr. Jones, who you will hear from in just a few moments, actually got her start in her state career with another exotic animal disease, which was Virulent Newcastle disease, which I hate to remind her about because she tells me that at aged her and since then she's been through two of those situations. These are multi-year infestations.

They are a dramatic, very impactful situation for all of our employees to be in for those types of situations. And even though that was a training situation, the one thing I can tell you that I said with confidence to the governor at the beginning of this is that we have the expertise here.

We have people who have experienced experience as well as scientific expertise, and they are respected across this nation for what they can contribute to the knowledge of all of us learning together. While H5N1, which is what we are calling avian influenza, has been prevalent here in California, it's not unprecedented.

So this response to the emergency and an integrated approach was the first thing that had to happen. And I want to also thank Dr. Pan. We've been through a lot together in the last few years. But it's that approach, as well as the Office of Emergency Services, the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, but we also work very collaboratively with CalEPA and CalRecycle on some of those issues. So it's a very integrated approach.

And the system that's been put in place really does pay off to mitigate even more harm that could happen. The steps that we took immediately upon this find were immediate quarantines, which is part of the plan, and testing to really understand where exactly it was. And that testing was very important because that type of surveillance can give US indicators of where it is before we actually see symptoms. And that's been, I think, one of the challenging parts of trying to keep this as contained as we possibly can.

But what really helped us after several months of being in the situation was when the governor declared the emergency in December. What that did is bringing all of the teams together on a daily or weekly basis as needed. But it also allowed us to do contracting faster for some of the supplies, and it freed up some of the personnel from different categories to be able to work the longer hours that were required at that time.

I also want to call out the hugely important investment the state has made for several decades in our lab facilities to be able to make sure that we have scientific expertise, diagnostics capability, and immediate diagnosis so that we can act more rapidly when we have the situation and can have it confirmed and can take the kinds of actions that are necessary.

As part of the governor's executive order, we also have been working very closely with Cal/OSHA and the Department of Industrial Relations to make sure that all the measures that are possible to be taken to protect our employees, in addition to public health, were in place through that process.

I would also say that I am grateful to the partnership we have with USDA and the federal government. There has been a very close there, for a while, weekly calls, they're starting to diminish now with CDC, HHS, FDA, and USDA. That's been important because all of us have relationships. Politics come and go, but we have long standing relationships at the technical level, the scientific level, and the program level. And I am especially grateful for USDA's commitment of people power of expertise. And you'll hear from Dr. Sifford.

These are built after years of working together, understanding our situation here, being able to move employees around the country because we're not the only state dealing with this. And being able to provide surge capacity, which has also been very important for us, especially at the beginning of our situation. Last week I was in Washington D.C., which was Secretary Rollins, the new USDA Secretary's first full week on the job.

And she did announce her 5 point plan. I'm sure you're all familiar with that. I am taking comfort that the administration and Secretary Rollins personally has publicly stated repeatedly what a high priority avian influenza is. And last week's announcement involves a billion dollars of additional investment, not only for increased and enhanced biosecurity on the farms and being able to offer services, and where they see breaches in that, being able to provide financial incentives to help poultry and bovine operations be able to have the equipment that might be necessary for additional biosecurity.

But also things like wildlife habitat assessments that are happening have been happening on a pilot basis, but also in this state to see if there are intrusions that could be closed up. But there's also $400 million being made available for financial assistance to make sure that we can continue the types of surveillance and testing that we have doing, and financial relief to the farmers who have lost productivity, in addition to the millions of birds that have had to be euthanized for those poultry operations. And finally, most promising is $100 million to really try to accelerate the development of effective vaccines as well as therapeutics.

We're all very anxious to see if there are some opportunities that will actually help with the situation and not do more harm. It's a very tedious process to go through the trials, and we don't have immediately effective tools available on the bovine front. There have been some announcements about the poultry front, but again, we want to make sure that we're not causing harm and losing markets in the process because of trade issues. And so that's something that the federal government seems to be very in tune with.

That's beyond our pay scale to be able to make those kinds of negotiations happen. But as vaccines become more readily available, we have to make sure they can actually be deployed, that it's operational, that it doesn't cause some unintended consequences, including something like exacerbating what's going to be a very tough export market situation for the state as it is.

With that, I just want to say again how grateful we are for the investment in the lab situations that we have. We have our key lab, which is at UC Davis, as a partnership of the State of California through the Department of Food and Agriculture, with the UC Davis Veterinary Medicine School.

I will call out that that's the number one veterinary school in the country, as is our College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. Very importantly lab. It's this combination of public service as well as cutting edge science and technology that's helped us create a lot of new diagnostic tools. More than a decade ago, we cut the ribbon on a new lab for the Animal Health Network in Tulare. I'm very sad to say that that lab was flooded out in the early floods of 2023, and it's still not back online.

But we also have the investment, thanks to you in the Legislature and the governor, of a new lab in Turlock, which will be opening, we hope, by the end of this year. Very important lab network just here in California. But I also want to state that because we have a national animal health laboratory network, we have been able to activate that when we've had surges in all of the samples that we're sending on a daily basis.

And those have been going to Cornell, to Minnesota, and to Iowa to help backfill what we might not be able to handle on a daily basis and still keep our eye on the priority focus of what we're doing here in the State of California. So with that, I want to thank you all for your attention. I look forward to your questions, and I'm eager to turn it over to our experts. And with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Annette Jones, our state veterinarian.

Thank you very much for inviting us here today. And as just I'll introduce myself. To start with, as was stated, I'm the state veterinarian, but I'm also the director for Animal Health and Food Safety Service at the Department of Food and Agriculture, which means as state veterinarian, ultimately in statute, I'm responsible for acting.

It's not a may, it's a must, when there are certain diseases that threaten livestock and poultry in the state, and that's through policy and quarantine. And then as director for Animal Health and Food Safety Services, the programs that ensure that meat, poultry, and eggs and milk are safe fall within our division. And so you can imagine that we work very closely with the Department of Public Health, not just for this incident, but is a matter of course. So with that, let me see see if this is working. Oops.

There we go. So just I wanted to go over bird flu. A lot of you have been impacted in your districts, and you probably got a lot of questions. So I'm going to try and go over some really high level background information and then a little bit about what our approach is.

And then we get a lot of questions on food safety and testing. So I'll touch on that, and then I'm going to finish up with just a quick update of where we're at. So from a big picture perspective, bird flu, what is bird flu? And oh, I should also add that I'm going to try and address this from an animal health perspective, and you know, leave the public health side of it to my public health colleagues. So, you know, One Health effort. So first of all, influenzas mutate all the time. We all know that because of seasonal flu.

You know, humans have their own flu, so we're aware of that. But this virus like to shift segments. That's why we keep getting these new types in our bodies, see different types of influenza. The other thing that to keep in mind because it's going to be important for some later slides is bacteria can replicate on their own, but viruses need to enter a living cell to use that cell's mechanism of their host species to replicate. So bacteria, I mean viruses to create more viruses need to enter living cell.

And there's some species barriers there. So all influenzas don't infect all species because there's some barriers to that. The next point I want to make is it's a crafty virus, but it's also a wimpy virus. So it's pretty easy to inactivate this virus or kill this virus.

So ph, temperature, many things are our friends when it comes to trying to inactivate the virus. It can live in the environment under good circumstances for an extended period of time. And then I just want to touch on the common naming, types of naming so that we're clear on that.

So you often hear low pathogenicity and high pathogenicity, and it's really important that we're aware that means how that virus impacts chickens. So it doesn't reflect anything on human health or threat to human health. Sometimes they align. The viruses that are bad for humans are also highly pathogenic.

But whenever you hear that word, it means its impact on chickens in particular. And then the last thing you know, the H5s and the H7s and the N9s and N1s and N2s, those refer to two proteins on the virus. But the point I wanted to make there is all H5N1s aren't the same, and they're not all necessarily related. And we do a lot of genome sequencing and phylogenetic trees and things like that to understand more about the virus. So with that, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the virus of concern today.

And it was mentioned by the secretary. It first appeared worldwide in 2020 in Europe and Central Asia, where a high path and low path switch segments and created H5N1 in the clade of concern. From then it went to North America through migrating birds. And then we first detected it in commercial poultry in 2022, as we're aware of.

And since then we've had several outbreaks. Usually they're somewhat seasonal. Depends on what part of the country you're talking about when we see these increases of cases. And up until recently, it was all wild birds to poultry, and that's how we got those cases. And they were another term, they were the B type.

When you look at the whole genome sequencing, they were in the kind of B category genotypes. So it gets more complex from there. I'm just trying to keep it simple, and you'll see why it's relevant. And then in late 2023 or early 2024, one of those B type H5N1s became infective to cows.

Not just cross the species barrier, but it also then spread cow to cow. We're aware of that history. And then in 2024-2025, we started seeing... So meanwhile we had this bee type that now is in cows. But when we looked at the flyways and started checking what's in our wild birds and migrating birds, we were seeing more and more D type. So that's D1.1. So if you ever read or hear about D types, that's what they're referring to. It actually first showed up in the Pacific Flyway. Here we first started seeing it.

The issue with these D types is they swap those segments really easily. So remember I mentioned virus influenza like to swap out pieces and evolve. Well, the D type seems to do that pretty readily. And in Merced, I get a lot of questions because it was announced that we had a duck farm in Merced in December that was positive for H5N1, but it was also positive for H5N9. So I get a lot of questions, like that's a little scary to some people, what's happening.

But what happened was that H5N1 was one of those D types that likes to swap. And then it recombined with a low path, which is just normally in our wild birds and ducks. And that flock had two double infection and it switched the N type, so we got this H5N9. We feel like it's incidental, it's different.

If you look at the lineage, it's very different. Both the H type and the N type are not related to what they're seeing in China. They also have an H5N9 there, which is called causing concern. It is not from that one and it's not similar to that one. It was just a swap of the H5N9 with a native strain. The point I'm making by telling this story is influenzas evolve, and they're going to keep evolving. And our responses need to recognize that. This is another question we get a lot.

So this is a nice picture from a recently published journal that my friends at the California Animal Health and Feed Safety Lab shared with me. The point I want to make with this slide is in the middle there you see the ducks, geese, and other aquatic wild birds. That is the native species for this clade of influenza.

And you can see those arrows point to all the different spillover events where this influenza went from those animals to other animals. And the circles mean that within that species it can spread duck to duck to duck or seabird to seabird. And then all the animals without a circle means there was a single spillover event, or even maybe a couple, but it didn't then spread from animal to animal.

So the virus somehow figured the key to unlock to get into that animal, but it wasn't able to be successful enough to develop enough virus to then go animal to animal within the species. So we call those dead end hosts in the veterinary world. That doesn't mean they die, sometimes they may.

It depends on how it affects them. But it means the virus doesn't go anywhere. It's a dead end for the virus. Unfortunately, though, you can see there's a couple of other circles there. There have been three other times when this virus in this clade has successfully infected other host species and then spread animal to animal to animal.

One time was in South America's sea mammals, like sea lions. Another time was in Europe with their minks and fur farms. And then we're overly familiar with what's happened here in the US with our cattle population. And then it has spilled over into a few other species since then.

So just kind of wrapping up the story on evolution. The concern as a veterinarian that I have is more this, and that is that we've had that one time spillover event of a B type. Now you see why I gave you that background in Texas. And then that B type virus spread cow to cow and came here to California. But more recently, the D type, which is now in all of our wild birds, spilled over again in Nevada and then separately in Arizona, two pretty close neighbors. And so now we have three spillover events. And it did then spread cow to cow.

Once it's, once it's spilled over into the cows. We don't know, we're hoping that there's going to be immunity to that virus because there's enough similarities between what our dairies just went through. So we're hoping that the herd immunity that's developed in our herds will protect them from this virus.

But I bring that up again to make the point of this is something we need to stay alert for. So, last slide. This is another background slide so that you can help illustrate why we do what we do. It's a kind of cartoon of a cow. And if this virus infects poultry, that's, you know, it's avian influenza.

They're an avian species, so really replicates a lot. And you can find virus, they breathe it out, it comes out the opposite end. If you swab their mouth or swab the opposite end, you can get positive for live virus. In cows, the virus seems to have a key that particularly likes the mammary gland.

That's why you always hear about milk tests and bulk milk tests because that's the easiest place to find the virus. And it's actually really easy. When you do a nasal swab or respiratory, we've even done air sniffers, and they usually don't pick up the virus, so they're not really breathing it out normally. And in feces, very rare.

In urines, there have been positive. So probably a systemic inspection. But that helps you understand why we focus movement control, like USDA's policies on interstate movement and our within the state movements. We really focus on lactating cows and what we call, those of you from dairy areas will get this, but springers, which are pregnant cows, queen close to parturition because they have nice big full mammary glands. So that's really where we try and focus our controls.

So we always do let science guide our policy, and we look at how a virus affects the species that we're dealing with, and we try and have our controls geared to those specific situations. So for cows, as was mentioned, it does spread. This virus spreads actually surprisingly fast cow to cow.

It's highly contagious, and it does make them very sick. It has impacted those dairy farmers, who you'll probably hear about, significantly. But with supportive care, as was mentioned, they recover. And so the actions for cow is mostly to try and reduce the virus load in the environment. Because there's too much virus, it'll overwhelm any immune protections or biosecurity. So we try and reduce the virus in the environment through quarantine, testing to know where it is, biosecurity, we limit cow movements.

So if a dairy is infected and they need to move something for animal welfare or other reasons, we do a risk evaluation, we do permits with conditions. It's very labor intensive and very active. But the idea is to try and contain the virus. For poultry, poultry have been infected for some time. There's a lot of science out there on what works and what doesn't work. And there's a game plan that all states follow, all countries follow, because this is not new for us in poultry. And again, you need a living cell to replicate.

And we found that if you let the virus replicate too much, basically a viral plume evolves. It could be just dust particles with virus on it, and it can literally blow poultry farm to poultry farm. USDA has gathered a lot of evidence to suggest that that's true. So our tactic with poultry is very rapid euthanasia of those flocks. And the reason is the virus kills them, a pretty horrendous death anyway. So there's a humane reason behind that rapid action. But it also, the bigger humane reason is to protect the neighbor flock.

And then one last thing, and I have a reference there on the website and will provide it if you're interested. But we do try and take a regional approach because this is a huge state, talking to the choir. It's very different from region to region. And we want our response to not just follow science, but also recognize the differences in the different places that different regions are in the outbreak. I'm going to echo the secretary's comment on the lab.

So, because when we have a positive test, it's not like trying to determine prevalence so that you can make some other type of policy decisions, which we do that testing also. It's normally our tests trigger a regulatory action. So the test results have to be extremely accurate and consistent.

So if we send a sample to any one of the labs in the state or in another state, we need to make sure we're going to get the same exact result as if we did it in our lab. And it has to be accurate. And USDA, Dr. Sifford will hopefully mention, they do oversee that lab network and the technicians have to be certified, the tests have to be certified. There's lots of stringent controls to make sure it's accurate. And that's really important because I will make the decision to euthanize millions of birds potentially based on a test. So it has to be accurate.

And then the secretary mentioned this, that the Legislature and the governor and people before me had really good vision on where to put our lab network in the state. You can see those dots line up with, if you're familiar with animal agriculture in the state, it is right where our agriculture is.

And then San Bernardino is also where we get a lot of animal movement into the state. So introduction of new viruses and bacteria and other things. So great vision. In fact, we even had funding lined up and was being spent, but the timing wasn't terrific for this outbreak. Largest outbreak of my career.

I've been in my position for 20 years. Many, many, many outbreaks. This definitely tried us. But as was mentioned, both Turlock and our Tulare labs are under the weather or not done. But they will be soon. They'll be operational very soon. Okay, the next topic I want to just touch on, as I mentioned, is food safety and testing.

So food safety is a layered approach for food safety in the state and the nation. And it takes multiple layers to make sure that every time you sit down with your family to eat a meal, it's consistently safe. And the first layer really starts on the farm. And kind of probably key to all this are the activities of the farmers, the ranchers, and the processors. Who's motivated more than them to make sure products are safe and consistent, and then we verify it.

So we being the collective agencies that have a food safety role, there's certain things that we inspect and look at to make sure everything's consistently safe. So kind of going back to the farm, and more specifically to avian Influenza, one of the things that we do on the farm for influenza is testing.

So you need to know what's infected and what's not infected. So it took us a little while to get there because there were some logistic hurdles we had to overcome. But currently, every dairy in the state is either being tested or is under quarantine. And so it's under control.

So the plan is to have ongoing testing to make sure we understand that now that we know this virus can get in cows, which was a surprise to all of us, we need to make sure we can keep an eye on that. And then for poultry, we've known this virus can affect poultry for years.

So there's, the surveillance and testing in poultry isn't new. All poultry in the state, before they go to slaughter, they're tested under the National Poultry Improvement Program. 21 days before they go to slaughter, they have to have a negative test. But if they're in a control area, which means the risk for influenza is pretty high, then the testing stakes go way up and they need to be tested multiple times very close to when they go to harvest. And then we have a few other surveillance programs layered on top of that.

Then the other thing kind of sticking at the farm level. It is mandatory. This isn't true in every state, but in California, there's a legal mandatory requirement to report unexplained signs of disease consistent with high path AI. It's actually broader than that. It's any unexplained major death loss, plus several reportable diseases, and also any influenza tests.

And then there's also standing prohibitions against products from sick cattle or poultry entering the human food chain. That responsibility falls on the farmer and rancher. And then probably most relevant to high path AI, when we do detect disease, and there is a potentially, you know, up to three weeks for cattle where they may be infected but asymptomatic, which is why we test.

But as soon as we have a positive or a suspect, then we quarantine the herd and control movement to slaughter. And then kind of shifting to the second layer or third layer at processing. So processors, they have to look at what all the hazards are that the food that they're processing could possibly encounter and then have mitigations and testing in place to stop that.

And then at meat harvest and poultry harvest, there's USDA inspectors on site at all times that they operate, and at processing plants, CDFA and FDA, but CDFA in particular, and a few counties. There's eight counties. Well, no, actually processing, it's all CDFA are in there multiple times a year. And what they really look at are pasteurizers.

In fact, pasteurizers, they have to record their times and temperatures. And it's sealed. So not only do we know they're working when we're there, but we know they're working when they're not there. And it's important because pasteurization is 100% effective in inactivating this virus. And then, of course, at home, we all have a responsibility for how we handle food. So last thing I want to touch on is just a quick where are we at now update, starting with dairies and then the next slide will be poultry. So dairies.

The good news is we are lifting quarantines now faster than we're placing them. There were times in December where I wanted to break down in tears because every night would be 30 new, you know, cases in dairies. And it was frustrating for, because you can tell from my talk that we were doing everything. We were using all the experience we had to try and stop the spread, but it was still spreading. So now, though, we are getting ahead of the virus. I pulled the data on the 22nd for the stock, so this trend is continuing.

We have had a few other dairies that have become infected over the past couple days, mostly in Southern California, but in the Central Valley, we're going in very positive direction. We also have done over 600 biosecurity audits, and we do long epidemiologic questionnaires to try and put the picture together of spread.

And I didn't mention that, but we have also done, I was on one of my previous slides, but we do a lot of research on the dairy side because it's hard to make a policy when you don't understand entirely how the virus is behaving in the host species and how it's moving from cow to cow or dairy to dairy.

So we have close to 40 different studies happening in California. And USDA did one of the most impressive things I've seen, and I don't think I've seen it before in my career, is they made emergency funds available for emergency research. And research is usually not emergency.

We have In California alone, $2.3 million, some directly to the university and some through CDFA to implement projects to better understand this outbreak. And those EPI questionnaires help inform some of that research. Okay, poultry update. You can see the three waves of virus. We all know we've had it since 2022. We've talked about that a couple times.

Last year's virus was a year ago in December. The worst outbreak of my career at the time. Completely ruined my Christmas, but really ruined the producers' Christmas. And all the light blue there are wild bird introductions. That was the same thing, wild bird introduction into our poultry flocks.

And then this past virus, this past year just far outstripped anything I've ever seen or the state's ever seen, in fact. And I want to point out that the kind of golden, yeah, they look kind of gold on that slide. Those are all the introductions into poultry flocks from dairies.

And then the light blue is from wild birds. So the poultry farmers did a pretty good job. They improved their biosecurity from last winter. They put a lot of money into it and they did a pretty good job keeping the wild bird strains out. But there was just too many infected dairies around the poultry producers for their biosecurity to work. The other thing you can see is price of eggs. Why did it go up? Because this has been the worst outbreak this country has ever seen. Last slide, other than some resources. So people say, okay, now what?

How are we going to get out of this? It seems it was depressing. Is it going to keep happening? And I think it's just we just need to stay steady. Influenza is going to be around. It's been around for centuries probably, is going to keep changing and keep evolving.

And so we just need to stay steady, make sure our infrastructure is in place. And we need to do three things, and we have to do all three or it's not going to work. You can't do one or two and have it work. We need to keep up with the biosecurity, which are actions we take to stop virus from moving. It's very hard on a dairy. And so it's a cultural change and we're going to have to do studies to understand what works and what doesn't.

We're going to have to keep up testing because this virus does change, and we need to understand what we're dealing with and where it is. And then we need to do what we can to reduce the virus load because the best biosecurity in the world will not keep out virus when it's just overwhelmed.

I've seen this on multiple outbreaks. So to reduce the virus in the environment right now, we did it the hard way. We exposed a lot of our dairies, not on purpose, to virus and they developed immunity. But vaccine would be a lot easier. So if vaccine works and it's approved, that's definitely something that we'd like to look at for dairy cows. There's a lot of things, we don't know if that's the path forward at this point, but it's something we want to keep on the radar. And then for poultry, the way we reduce the virus load is rapid euthanasia. So that will probably have to continue or unless there's a vaccine for them, we're not going to. That'll be another hour, though. So just finished up here. Just some resources on our website. And open to questions or comments. That's a lot.

Thank you. I know we have two additional speakers on this first part of the panel, and we'll go ahead and continue on and do questions and answers at the end. And we're going to be moving from the animal health side of things to the human health side of things. So, Dr. Pan, if you're ready, please proceed.

Sure. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Chair and Members. Thank you so much for inviting us here this afternoon. As mentioned, my name is Dr. Erica Pan. I am, as of last month, our new California Department of Public Health director and state public health officer.

You may also have known me from my work right before this, also within the Department of Public Health as the state epidemiologist overseeing the Center for Infectious Diseases. And I'm also an infectious disease specialist. So I wanted to share, as mentioned, we'll really shift to the human health aspects here, and I'll be kind of echoing and building on a lot of the things my colleagues have mentioned already.

But our state health department has been involved in and preparing for and responding to this outbreak, including our approach to prevention, detection, treatment, and containment. And you got a great overview from the animal perspective about influenza A. The other kind of tidbit I just wanted to mention, in addition to the great overview Dr. Jones mentioned, is that influenza A, so avian flu, bird flu, and this particular outbreak, H5N1, is a subtype of influenza A.

And so there are many kinds of influenza A's. And again, Dr. Jones touched on this. But within human health, too, there's different strains. So there's seasonal flu, which is typically, you'll see those she mentioned those proteins have a number like Hs, H1 and H3 are the typical seasonal flu. And then what we're seeing here with avian flu is H5. And then as also mentioned, but just to echo that there are different strains that impact all kinds of different animals.

So humans, birds, pigs, cows, and other mammals, and a lot of these viruses continue to change and mutate. As already mentioned, but I just want to echo again that starting in 2022, our departments worked very closely together as we first saw H5N1 in poultry.

And our team worked really closely with CDFA when we were first seeing these poultry outbreaks to monitor poultry workers. And I'm actually really, we can all be proud that to date, we still have no reported human infections in poultry workers. So in that particular setting, we've actually done a really great job preventing human infections.

Last spring, when we first learned of these new infections in dairy cattle in other states in Texas, we quickly all activated together and we worked in public health. We activate our public health teams, our incident management team to prepare. And part of that was really echoing and leading our within our future public health investments, we've created a One Health position. So Secretary Ross mentioned that, but just to amplify that a little bit more, One Health is really thinking about health across the human, animal, and environmental health spectrum.

So we have an amazing vet who actually used to work at CDFA who's been leading a lot of our coordination. She helped pull all of us together. It was very timely. Last August, we had a multi-agency workshop where we walked through all these scenarios. What will happen when we get our first cow?

What will happen if we get our first human case? We also worked our Tulare partners that we'll talk to you in the second panel invited us to a tabletop where we were all working there too to prepare. So California was prepared. And we've really embraced this cross sector approach that Secretary Ross mentioned.

And we again want to consider the health perspective across all these different areas. So when we think about public health aiming to prevent and for this response specifically, that means prevention of, for humans, reducing exposure to this virus in animals, which happened first.

So for us, we're really thinking about preventing those human infections from infected dairy cows, poultry, or their products. So farm workers and others working with infected animals are the highest risk. And that's why we've really been prioritizing and working diligently with many partners.

Our local health departments first and foremost, but also farm worker organizations such as the UC Merced Community Labor Center and the Western Center for Farm Worker Health and Safety at UC Davis and the National Center for Farm Worker Health, and also dairy associations such as the Western United Dairies to ensure that workers are understanding the basics about bird flu disease, the importance of personal protective equipment, how to use it most effectively, and how to report and get help if they develop symptoms.

And really also getting a lot of feedback through that process on how to make our messages and information helpful on how to use these tools to be most effective. We've also literally provided personal protective equipment for dairy farm workers. And processors, slaughterhouse and poultry farm workers, and animal wildlife care centers have also been eligible for the personal protective equipment that we provided. So we've worked with all these local partners and we've distributed over 4.6 million pieces of personal protective equipment to 18 counties.

That includes over 800,000 respirator masks, three and a half million gloves, over 200,000 goggles and face shields, and almost 80,000 bouffant caps. This was mentioned by Dr. Jones, that we partnered closely as well with CDFA and our food and drug branch at the same Department of Public Health promotes food safety in response to detections, whether it's in raw milk or other food sources. So moving on to detection and just thinking about that in humans.

So the way it's been working is when an infected dairy herd or poultry flock is identified, CDFA notifies our team. We have a state public health vet who's a nice counterpart to Dr. Jones, who works very closely with Dr. Jones. So we get notified through that and then we in turn notify the local health department.

Then the local health department can work with the farm managers and owners to inform, educate, and monitor exposed workers, facilitate testing when there are symptoms, and ensure access to medicines to either treat the infection if they are a case or prevent illness in their household contacts and other members.

And we use our CalConnect system to make it as easy as possible for local health departments and or the farms to monitor and do those health checks. And more recently, we've alerted vets. So the other interesting crossover in One Health and coordination is that domestic cats are something that we're kind of in the public health side because domestic cats are in homes with humans. So we've alerted vets across the state that domestic cats with symptoms should get tested and reported to public health.

And we continue to work on investigations with partners to ensure our human and pet food supply is safe. And just, just a brief note on that. I loved how Dr. Jones describes the sort of the key how the virus enters the different species. And so cats seem to have a special key.

And she can clarify better because she's the vet, but in their brains. And so they also, cats are uniquely susceptible to very serious fatal infections and get brain infections and die. So we've seen a lot of feline species at all different settings, once they become infected, actually die. I also wanted to touch on human lab capacity.

You've heard a lot about our animal health testing. Our state has a robust network of 29 public health labs, including the state lab, which is our Viral and Rickettsial Diseases Lab in Richmond. Our state lab is one of three national influenza reference centers. And these public health labs in this network can perform specific testing for flu to look for the specific type of flu. So I was kind of describing earlier, there's all these different kinds. So we can look at that which H type is it and see is it seasonal flu or is it bird flu.

Also to improve our detection and looking for bird flu in humans, we've been working with many different laboratories. So I mentioned our public health lab network. But when you know, you go to the clinic or your family members go to the clinic or hospitals, when there's just general flu A testing, you can take it to the next level and do testing of those flu A positives and look to see is it seasonal or a novel flu or bird flu.

So in this state, we've tested over 29,000 flu A samples in this last year since this has occurred. We did identify two bird flu infections in children who did not have any other known exposure to animals through this method. But again, that's amongst testing over 29,000 individuals that had flu A.

So when cases are detected this way, then the local health department works to investigate what are those specific possible exposures. They ask about visits to farms, do you have pets? You know, are there, does anyone in the house work on a farm? So. And then they do contact tracing as well to see who else.

Again, we have not seen human to human transmission, but this is our work to ensure that and detect that. So we do that contact tracing, provide treatment to the individual case, and then also preventive medicine for the people who live with that case to make sure they don't get infected. So we also work closely.

We've done a lot of health alerts, a lot of webinars for healthcare providers across the state just to make sure they're thinking about this, thinking about not just regular flu, but bird flu and making sure they know how to test for it, ask for that special test for bird flu, report it to local health departments and treat potential bird flu infections in people. We've also, apologies that I'm recovering from a cold as you heard me yacking away there. We've also launched some community testing and vaccination efforts.

So that includes, we keep renaming this effort, but there's an Avian Flu Area Surveillance Testing, or AFAST, and that's been a collaboration with our health department, the Centers for Disease Control, TrueNorth, and Walgreens. And we've been able to provide free Covid and flu testing for community members in the areas that are impacted who have flu symptoms.

And then also add that H5 testing to that. To date, we've had 36 events in six counties through February 21st. So I think we've had more since then. And we also continue to work with other local partners to provide seasonal flu vaccine via these mobile resources. And I know there's always a lot of interest.

We gained a new tool in the pandemic for how to monitor infections, and that's wastewater surveillance. So in addition to human clinical tests, we can monitor H5N1 or bird flu through wastewater surveillance. So this is sort of a new complementary tool to all these other ways we monitor and test that I mentioned earlier.

And we're really learning a lot about this particular tool. We know that it can help us monitor trends in a certain community. And we've learned now, you know, it was of course stood up to test for infections in humans, but we're learning now we can see things like dairy processing plant dumping results or discarded milk from kitchen square sinks. We also, you know, it can it again helps with trends and early detection. But we can't estimate case counts based on wastewater surveillance. But it's been a really helpful and interesting and useful tool.

And we're definitely seeing the sort of level of H5N1 in our wastewater surveillance decrease over the last couple months. So to date, we've had 38 confirmed human cases of H5N1 or bird flu in California. We have not had one since mid January actually, and that case was actually symptomatic in December.

That was one of those pediatric cases that didn't have a known exposure. So we haven't had any new cases for a couple months. All of those close contacts have been monitored, as I mentioned. No human to human transmission has been detected in the current outbreak.

So thankfully we do see here in California the flu outbreak is slowing down. Fewer new detections, as mentioned by Dr. Jones, in other animals, and definitely in humans. We are continuing to watch and monitor these other different animals that seem to be infected. So I mentioned cats already.

We know that rodents can be infected and trying to learn from all of this testing and detections and our partners, how are these animals getting infected? This is all going to inform sort of human prevention, food safety, and how disease spreads between animals and or humans.

So we need to continue to monitor closely for changes in the virus that would allow it to spread between humans or be more commonly severe or resistant to current treatments or vaccines. Currently, we do have tools like the California Vaccine Management System that can help make vaccine ordering, distribution, administration, and tracking efficient.

This is another system we were able to stand up and use during the pandemic that we use for a lot of our different vaccines now. And we must stay prepared in the event bird flu does change and that we need to distribute bird flu specific vaccine for humans to prevent spread or severity in humans. So this concludes my remarks, and I'm happy to take questions when appropriate. Thanks.

Thank you, Dr. Pan. We'll move on to Dr. Rosemary Sifford, deputy administrator for... Is she on? She's back. Good to see you. Okay, Dr. Sifford, please begin when you are ready.

Thank you very much everyone for the opportunity to join you and for the flexibility to join you virtually. I'm Dr. Rosemary Sifford. I am the deputy administrator for USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services, Veterinary Services, and the chief veterinary officer for USDA.

I am taking you back to the animal health side and just want to build a little bit on the great presentations that have been provided so far about all the collaboration that has been happening in this outbreak response and all the work that we've been jointly doing just to give you a little bit of context and overview with regard to the national situation and livestock and some of the actions from USDA. So I think there are just a couple of slides. If someone could share those slides that would be great.

And if that doesn't work, I'll just move forward with my comments. Zero, there we go.

So I really wanted to just start by saying how unusual this outbreak has been. Dr. Jones, in particular, has already mentioned this, but we have been working with highly pathogenic Avian influenza for quite some time. And our last major outbreak in the United States was around 2015.

But what had happened in that outbreak and in all the previous outbreaks before that was that we would see the virus come to us, to our domestic poultry flocks, through wild birds, in one migratory season, or maybe it might continue through a second migratory season, but then those wild birds would develop immunity, and then they would not be bringing that virus back to our domestic flocks any longer.

And so, frankly, in 2022, when our first outbreak started in poultry, that was what we were anticipating. And so if you look at the bottom graph there, that blue line is the outbreak that we experienced in 2022, and that's the. The number of birds that were culled by month. And then the orange line is 2023.

And so, as you can see, we did see continuations with the virus, but to a lesser severity in the spring migration. And then we saw in the fall that this virus is really doing different things and is sticking with us longer than it has in the past. And then the gray line is 20.

And that's where you can see we really had a large outbreak again in the late fall of 2024 that came into the early spring of 2025, which is that little beginning yellow line there. And as Dr. Jones and others have already covered, you know that that period has been a very devastating period for us.

We are seeing a decrease now as we expect the fall migration started a little later in 2024 than it has in the past. And you can see that that also caused us with later detections in wild birds and then in our domestic poultry as well.

And our, you know, while we're on the decline right now, we really do not know how quickly the wild birds will begin their spring migration. And then based on that, what we might expect in terms of them bringing the virus back to us.

And then again, as has already been mentioned, the graph at the top relates to, to our dairy cattle situation. And again, that's really focused on 2024 and that small bit of yellow there is the beginning of 2025. We have had, as Dr.

Jones mentioned now, three distinct spillover events into dairy cattle, but we do not expect those spillover events to be nearly as frequent as they are in poultry. Most of our cases in domestic poultry have been direct introductions from wild birds, spillover events from wild birds.

So we do, we are seeing smaller numbers of cattle now, and we believe our surveillance that we have put in place will help us to, to be able to eliminate the virus from the, from the cattle herd. So with that, I'll go to the next slide just to focus on a couple of points that Dr.

Jones also already mentioned. And Dr. Jones, I'm not sure who has the ability to advance the slide, but there are two key areas of interest and focus for us. One is on surveillance and on biosecurity. Surveillance on the poultry side has been extensive for quite some time.

That is a key tool that we use to, to, to identify affected flocks. We have surveillance in place in peacetime as well as in response time.

And that surveillance is really, you know, the envy of the world with regard to how, how much we're able to detect virus early and then be able to address it very, very early. We were not doing surveillance for dairy cattle before the original Emerg response.

And over the last year we've really tried to implement surveillance and spread that nationally in dairy cattle through the National Milk Testing Strategy. And we're very happy to say that we now have 45 of the contiguous US states enrolled in that program and regularly testing.

Three states have tested to the point of being able to be considered unaffected. And we continue to work with all of the states to be able to do that surveillance.

And with the ultimate goal of elimina the virus from the dairy herd and then biosecurity, as has also been mentioned, just really the critical key, the best tool that we have in our toolbox right now to be able to help farmers protect themselves.

You know, in previous outbreaks we saw a significant amount of lateral spread from farm to farm. Folks accidentally moving the virus with them, whether it, you know, it be clothing or equipment or something of that nature. And we saw that this past year in many of the spread within the dairy herds.

But on the poultry side, they've really improved their biosecurity and really we haven't seen that much spread farm to farm. Our focus with them at this point is really on avoiding introduction from the wild birds. But again, as Dr.

Jones mentioned, if we can go to the next slide, we do know that we need more tools in the toolbox. The Secretary Rollins announcement last week is really focused on us improving biosecurity and improving the tools that we have available to us in the toolbox.

As this virus is doing things that it has not done in the past. We also need to understand more clearly how we can expand our offensive measures and be able to deal with this virus more effectively.

So we're focused on improving biosecurity, but also on improving the vaccines that might be available for us to use and doing research to further other tools that might be available. So on the slide here is the program that we have through the farm Bill that allows us to Fund projects associated with our readiness and response.

And we've been very fortunate to be able to Fund a number of really good projects that. That can have impact not only in the state or region where they're originally funded, but to be able to share that information and really have response and readiness impact across the. And then, as Dr.

Jones mentioned, we've recently had the opportunity to Fund other research specifically related to high path AI preparedness and response.

And then again, as Secretary Rollins announced last week, we plan in the next few weeks to put out new requests for proposals both around research and development for more advanced vaccines, as well as support for more research into transmission and other places where we have key questions about how we might be able to more effectively address this virus.

So with that, I just wanted to add a little bit of the national perspective. And again, we really do appreciate the collaboration and the cooperation with the usda, the states, and both animal health and public health partners and the industry to try to help us address this most challenging problem. Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Sifford. Okay, we'll go ahead and open it up for questions and answers. At this point, we'll do five minutes so we can move on to our next panel. We'll begin. I see Senator Cortese followed by Senator Rubio. And.

I'll just. I'll just stick. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll just stick with one question. I'm sure others will be covered. Others that I have will be covered by our Committee. The While, you know, going back to the diagram of, you know, which had seagulls and waterfowl and whatnot right in the middle of it.

And then, as I understood the diagram, there's contagion within that circle, but there's also contagion, obviously, coming out of it, you just explained that to some degree.

Further, what I haven't heard about, and I actually made an inquiry about a week and a half ago, separate from all of this, just to see what I can find out is what the impact, you know, sort of numerically, what the data is on the wild bird population on, you know, the actual.

On that actual population where I guess a lot of this emanates from.

And I totally understand, and being consistent with some of the opening comments, I understand as much as anybody, why the cascading effect of the economic impact on livestock, on domestic wildlife, excuse me, domestic animals and so forth is so important, you know, to focus on from every angle.

But is there data, I mean, do we even have data on what's happening out there with, with the migration and all of that? I mean, those birds are down, headed south.

They're going to turn around pretty soon, maybe is assume perhaps the virus is still out there and then they start working their way back north again, I guess. So it's two questions. One, what does that look like numerically? And second, is there anything we can do about that? Obviously, it's pretty hard to quarantine migratory birds.

I'm just curious about it.

Yep. The. I don't know if I need to do anything with that, but the. So our other partner that's really important is the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. So when we talk about one health, it really involves humans, wildlife and domestic animals. And we work.

They've been in all of the collaborations that we've been talking about, and they work very closely with USDA's Wildlife Services and the California Animal Health and Food Safety Lab. And we do monitor wildlife. But, you know, it's a.

With the millions of birds out there, it's a small sampling, but we do try and do that to try and understand what's next, what's coming. Is it still there? And for example, historically, Looking back, about 10% of the wild birds sampled carry some form of influenza. In about 10% of those, it's a highly pathogenic form.

So it's pretty common for wild birds to carry influenza. And I don't know if Dr. Sifford's still on. She may be able to comment on that, but that is kind of an early warning sign for us and domestic, from an agricultural perspective to try and look at that.

Appreciate it, Dr.

Siff.

Yeah, thank you very much, Dr. Jones. Excellent topics. And I would just add that Wildlife Services does produce a map that shows the detections that we have in wild birds across all four flyways in the US and as Dr.

Jones said, you know, we are working closely with our partners to help them to identify those wild bird detections as early as possible to provide that knowledge about what's circulating in the area. Wildlife Services does also monitor the migrations, but it's really hard to predict in advance.

There are other groups that also monitor those migrations in real time and provide us maps of where birds are moving that can be helpful. And then just one other thing to mention, is that also different in this outbreak than we have experienced previously?

We have seen more die offs of wild birds across the country in this outbreak than in previous outbreaks. So large numbers of birds that are found dead and are determined to be positive with high path AI things like snow Geese and groups of birds like that.

So that has been much more prevalent in this outbreak than we have seen in previous outbreaks. Which leads us to a whole set of questions about how this virus is persisting in wild birds and its impact there and how it's able to have some species that it can persist in season after season while it's killing others.

So those are research topics that we're keenly interested in.

Thank you. Through the chair, I just to the extent there, there is data that's easily distributable to this Committee, to the Members of this Committee at your convenience, it would be wonderful if we could get that.

I just think of it also in terms of, you know, turn towards the chair who represents a big district in the central Valley and you've got livestock and dairies and next to wetlands in huge water districts out there, Grasslands, Westland and everybody else. I mean, this has to.

Obviously it's all integrated in terms of what you're seeing in symptoms. But it'd be interesting, I think, for us to have basic data on whatever has been sampled out there, you know, or extrapolated, die off some of the things that Dr. Siffer just mentioned. Thank you, Madam Chair. Chair.

Senator Rubio. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. I do have a lot of questions, but let me just start with our communities. Our communities are very stressed currently at this time. There's a lot happening all at once, in particular as it pertains to rising cost of groceries. And you've mentioned eggs.

And that's something that seems to be the big issue that we can all see. And you mentioned earlier in your testimony that the reason the eggs are high is that this is the current, the worst outbreak in the country that we've ever seen. And at the same time, I believe I heard you say, Dr.

Annette Jones, that we need to stay steady. And you said it over and over again. And I think I heard Dr. Pon also stressed that we need to stay steady and prepared.

And how do we reconcile that in a time where we're hearing constant threats and cutbacks that we've already seen, in particular from the Federal government to key public health agencies. It seems you started with a lot of confidence in terms of the relationship you have and how well we're respected and in the country and nationally.

But once again, how do we reconcile the fact that there's these threats that are very real and our communities are feeling the strain right now and it's not going to stop. We see meat and other food items increasing.

Are you confident that we're going to able to weather some of the cuts that are coming our way and do you anticipate we're going to be massive in a couple of weeks or months and years? Give me a sense of what you think based on the cuts from the.

Federal government, I can touch on the response piece of that. So I'm really glad you asked that question because I did say stay steady, there's a game plan. And then I also said we have to look at the situation and front of us and respond, use science, respond to it. And what has changed is scale.

So we are, as a, you know, the state veterinarians and usda, we are having very active discussions on how do we change our response to an infected flock that could try and preserve more of the food from that flock. So eggs in this case. And that's where the whole discussion of.

And I didn't go into it because it's really complex, but vaccine could we look at, you know, if you have a big layer plant complex, could you possibly depopulate if they're vaccinated, could you depopulate these and not those We've seen time and time again when we've, we've tried that in California and Dr.

Sifford could attest they tried it across the country. Just do a little bit just to populate the really infected animals every time it spreads to the other group when they're in a certain close proximity.

But if you add vaccine, would that change the dynamic and allow to stop some of that spread to the other barn so that you could do partial. So right now we cannot do partial to population and have it work. But if we use vaccine, could we.

And then if we use vaccine is pretty complex because it doesn't prevent infection, it reduces, you know, it's so those things though what I can say is they're very actively being looked at both at the state and national, particularly at the national level. And we are very engaged with those discussions.

So I guess it's a follow up, if I may. And you are engaged. I think you started your conversation by saying that USDA is very committed to People power and helping move people around. And I mean, is this a conversation that's happening, let's say today, this week?

Because again, I almost feel like usda, the Department is one thing and then there's, you know, the political climate, if you will. And I know that when you talk to the agencies, if you talk to them privately, they'll tell you that they have concerns.

And so I want to ask, you said that I think there's 400 million investment to farmers and you listed some of the funding that's secured. Is that funding that's already in your hands? Talk to me about the funding. Where is it coming from and where is it at this time?

So that was just announced last Wednesday morning. And a lot of it will go through existing programs rather than all new programs. But some of it with regard to research and some of the vaccine work may be new programs.

And I would just like to reinforce that there's huge respect because a lot of the work that has to happen in these kinds of outbreaks cannot happen from a USDA sole approach.

They are very, we're very interlinked in how we respond to these, how we train for these so that there's a consistent response that the protocols are being followed that also comply with best practices when it comes to protection of the public health as well as livestock and the food supply and trade channels.

And so through the national associations. Dr. Jones is a former President of her national Association of Health Officers.

We have a number of work groups like that in addition to my Association of all the state departments of agriculture culture, where even though we're all from different parties, I don't want to get into partisan stuff, but we're from different parties.

But if we keep the end goal and the health outcomes that we're trying to achieve, we usually can have a very strong unified voice on these are the priorities, these are the things that do require the investment.

And it's tied back to food supply and affordability, which has driven our food policy in this country since the Depression era of making sure that we have access to food and affordable food. So we all have to use our voices in addition to advocates from the industry itself, which oftentimes are very effective and also reinforcing.

When we talk about science and fact and evidence based criteria. This is where I think we can all be very unified and it's absolutely crucial that we continue to do that from our side of this.

Well, thank you for that last question. I saw last one. I just want to know because you talk about, you know, evidence base and criteria. And we know that sometimes, you know, facts matter and that facts are not always what we hear. But I'm really concerned about being we withdrew from the World Health Organization, as you know.

And you know, we talk about the pandemic that we just went through and here we're talking about, you know, the worst outbreak that we had. And so I think about the future, we definitely need to work together and not just here in our country.

But how are you going to move forward if we don't have the surveillance and the global knowledge that everyone brings to the table? What's the plan for that.

At the World Health Organization? And some of those issues, I don't want to try to speak for my public health colleagues.

I will sort of mention just a couple things that we have analogous networks of state internal health officials. Actually, coincidentally, also our state public health vet, who again is a counterpart to Dr. Jones, President elect for our national there's a lot of national conversations amongst state and local officials on how we continue to have national awareness.

We actually have strong communication as well with some of our World Health Organization partners. The Pacific or, sorry, the Pan American Health Organization is also based in the Americas here and we have sort of partnerships there, too. So I think, you know, we're continuing to navigate all of this and we'll continue to monitor it.

But right now we are maintaining those strong communications and situational awareness.

Thank you. Appreciate you.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and move to Senator Alvarado-Gil for one more question for this panel so we can move on to the next.

I'll consolidate my question and try to keep it quick here. So, one, I wanted to acknowledge the collaboration between the CDFA and the USDA in this situation. I'm hearing this is the world's worst outbreak yet. We're not talking about human death. And I think that for me says that we're doing a lot of things right.

I also want to be I want to acknowledge Secretary Ross's statement regarding that upfront investment. And, you know, certainly in what we've talked about, it seems like bringing your experience and thank you for your massive dedication to our state.

Because when we have that institutional knowledge and your experience there, it helps us get through some of these worse situations. And thank you also, Secretary Ross.

So I want to thank all of, all of you for your collaboration in getting us here, particularly usda, for ensuring that those that they're listening to our constituents that are having the loss of livestock and flocks and making sure those USDA dollars are flowing. I'VE also got good feedback from our constituents in terms of that.

So to me, it looks like California, we are approaching this as an animal health emergency. And that is the correct way to go down this line. Where I'm. Where I'm concerned is around the upfront investment in funding. And I know that the chair will relate to this.

But having the Tulare and the Turlock labs not functional during this time really is a concern and that they are not going to be open for another year, possibly.

If we are truly going to be ahead of the curve, knowing that we are dealing with H5N1 now and it is a, you know, it's a shifty virus, as we say.

What do we need to do as legislators to ensure that you have the funding that you need to get these two labs up and going for your rigorous testing? And then on this, on the second part of this, I alluded to the fact that it is chick season.

I know I'm getting a dozen chicks delivered to my farm this week. What do we need to do to ensure that as we are seeing more flocks growth in backyard farms and in small hobby farms, how do we make sure that the education that you have is being disseminated to the consumer?

Yeah, if I could try to quickly answer that. The Governor has made it very clear that resources should not be an issue on this. And so far, all of our needs have been met through the USDA cooperative agreements that we have in place. But we understand the significance of this. I would also say say Dr.

Jones has a number of staff that are really well versed, having worked in the sector for a while on dealing with backyard flocks and how to reach the community. And they've actually, they were early pioneers because of our.

Of our two and a half year experience of virulent Newcastle's disease on social media as a very effective way of engaging people. And then I would also add our partners within Cooperative Extension, which is part of the University of California, where there are people in every county.

Not all of them are poultry specialists, but it is because they have nutrition specialists in addition to ag specialists and urban garden specialists, whatever it might be. We have a network to really reach into the most local communities possible.

In addition to some of the new networks that we're creating because of the farm to school program, we have regional navigators that are really working with nonprofits within those local communities where people are very focused on local food systems and what can we do to support that?

So I feel that we've got the outlets and we have the data and the information to reach all of those folks in language and culturally appropriate outreach to make sure that we can be in all those places. But it won't be just from us. It will be through these kinds of partnerships and collaborations.

Well, thank you to panel one. Very informational. And we appreciate your time. And we'll move. We'll have panel two. Come on up. We have Karen Elliot and Edward Flores. And Karen, she's the public health Director for Tulare County, and Edward is the faculty Director of UC Mercedes Community and Labor Center. Thank you both for being here.

And please feel free to begin when you're ready.

Oh, thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. Thank you for allowing me to be part of this hearing today. My name is Karen Elliott. I am the public health director for Tulare County. I am honored to share how Tulare County Public Health swiftly and effectively responded to California's first confirmed human case of H5N1.

Tulare County received notification of our first case on October 3rd. We had already began to prepare for a response in March 2024. This is when we identified the growing threat posed by the dairy related cases in the Midwest. With over 200 dairies in Tulare County, it wasn't a question of if it would happen, but when.

Anticipating this risk, we took proactive measures, training staff, strengthening monitoring systems, and strategically stockpiling piling PPE to ensure a rapid and effective response. In August 2024, our public health emergency preparedness team hosted a tabletop exercise on H5N1, bringing together over 85 participants from the dairy, ag, state agencies, local government, healthcare organizations, and county partners.

This exercise fostered stronger partnerships and helped us identify key areas for improvement in emergency response planning. On October 27, after receiving notification of the first case of an infected herd, we immediately activated our Department Operations Center, also called the DOC.

This is a centralized hub where various public health programs can manage and coordinate our response to an emergency situation. There was additionally an immediate connection and coordination with the California Department of Food and Ag and the California Department of Public Health as we began closely monitoring the ultimate spread of the virus to other county dairies.

The combination of pre-planning, tabletop exercise, the immediate DOC activation, and coordinating alongside our state partners strengthened our preparedness for responding to our first and to our additional human cases. Additionally, our ability to act quickly was made possible in large part by the state investment provided to our department through Futures of Public Health funding.

This allowed us to build a strong team of dedicated professionals, including our deputy health officer, lab director, supervising nurse, infectious disease nurse, emergency specialist, communicable disease investigators, and many others who served as the backbone of our H5N1 response.

They led case investigation, coordinated testing and prophylaxis, dispensed PPE, and ensured community members had the resources they needed. We work closely with the ag sector, leveraging the strong relationships built with dairy owners through our Environmental Health Dairy Program Inspectors. We also collaborated with CDFA to implement safety protocols.

Our team organized PPE distribution events and outreach efforts to protect workers and prevent further spread. We coordinated alongside our valued community based organizations to educate and provide available resources sources to the community that provided that participated in these scheduled events. Tulare County alone distributed over 1.7 pieces of PPE, accounting for more than 10% of the national total.

Public Health also worked with Land O'Lakes, Dairy Farmers of America, California Dairies, and Western United Dairies to coordinate messaging through newsletters and other channels. Ensuring clear communication and outreach. Our public health nursing staff provided critical support by monitoring up to 2,000 exposed workers at one time.

They conducted monitoring and outreach to exposed individuals and their families to ensure access to testing, prophylactic treatment, and other essential resources. Additionally, Public Health onboarded 14 different healthcare partners throughout the county to ensure that testing and education were widely accessible to the community.

The Tulare County Public Health Lab also played a crucial role, rapidly processing H5N1 tests and providing vital subtyping data to aid in understanding the virus. Our local public health lab was able to rapidly process a test, delivering results typically within the same day the specimen was received.

They continue to provide the testing for specimens to local and neighboring counties and have been screening positive influenza A swabs received from our area healthcare facilities for H5. Additionally, we leveraged state technology systems like CalConnect, CalREDIE, and the CalVax and the myCAvax system, ensuring flu vaccinations were widely accessible in our county, which further reduced flu risks or viral mutations that could pose a larger threat to human health.

Throughout our multifaceted response, Tulare County Public Health maintained clear and consistent communication with key partners including CDPH, CDC, CDFA, local healthcare providers, and other county health departments. I cannot understate the importance of teamwork and resources that were coordinated through this collaboration.

Our approach balanced the need to protect public health while recognizing the responsibilities and concerns of impacted workers and their households. Tulare County's H5N1 response serves as a model of preparedness, coordination, and dedication. Through the support of Public Futures of Public Health funding, we have demonstrated that strategic investments in public health infrastructure save lives.

Moving forward, we remain committed to safeguarding our community by being prepared and working closely with local, county, state, federal, and industry partners to ensure strong public health foundation for the future. Thank you, and I am available for questions.

Thank you. We'll hear next from Edward.

Thank you. Thank you to the California Senate for the opportunity to present testimony on behalf of the UC Merced Community and Labor Center. Dairy farm workers are essential to the production of California milk and dairy, yet they are largely immigrant, non-citizen, and undocumented.

Historically, they have had fewer worker rights and these dynamics have enabled employer non-compliance with labor laws. Today, I will share research findings indicating that dairy farm employer non-compliance with labor standards presents risks for the spread of bird flu from animals to workers and to the broader public.

We just saw some very detailed scientific presentations about bird flu and its spread and the decline in some of that spread. In a moment, we're going to see presentations on behalf of the industry with great pictures of people, workers wearing protective gear.

But I want to present a couple of facts that we really need to wrestle with today. First, as of February 22nd, California had already, as we mentioned earlier, had already registered 753 positive dairies, yet nationwide only 840 people have been tested after being exposed to sick animals.

We need to do something about, because we need to do something about those numbers if we want to protect workers and the public. In terms of human health impact and response, unless we can adequately explain why 753 dairies were positive but nationwide only 800 people had been tested, then we're not really grappling with the right questions.

So I'll talk a little bit about the research we did. In October 2024, the Community and Labor Center designed an interview instrument with input from California Department of Public Health, asking about dairy farm workers' experiences with workplace health and safety and bird flu mitigation.

Dr. Jennifer Cossyleon served as principal investigator and also on the team were myself and staff researchers Rodrigo Alatriste-Diaz, Keila Luna, Karina Juarez, and Andrés Arias. From October 2024 to January 2025, the team conducted interviews with dairy farm workers laboring in Fresno, Tulare, Kings, and Merced counties.

Interview topics included employment backgrounds, familiarity with bird flu, health and safety practices and challenges, and reporting of health and safety concerns. And I should also mention our center has a partnership with CDPH's Center for Preparedness and Response's H5N1 Response Guidance, Outreach, and Health Equity.

Team and the Department of Industrial Relations invited us to present these research findings recently to their staff. In February 2025, the center published Producing Risk, a research brief that summarizes the findings up to date. The brief identified three core themes. First, experiences with workplace health and safety, non-compliance. Second, the prioritization of production over health. And third, how the lack of an economic safety net has undermined adherence to health and safety standards.

First, workers mentioned a range of practices non-compliant with sanitary standards, including inadequate breaks and designated eating areas, lack of personal protective equipment, lack of proper storage for work gear, and lack of hand soap and potable water. Workers shared, for example, that they often ate among cattle, sometimes while overseeing milking processes.

Employers at times did not properly provide needed gear like boots, and they did not always have proper storage for their work gear and sometimes took soiled gear with them after their shift. Second, workers expressed in many ways that their health and safety were secondary to production, including a quick pace of work that deprioritized their basic needs, prioritization of cattle and consumer health over their own health, lack of training, and a hostile work environment.

Workers mentioned not receiving training about protecting themselves from bird flu, being rushed from task to task, unable to take breaks, knowing about bird flu symptoms, detection, testing and treatment in cows, but not among humans, and work environments where supervisors minimized injuries or ignored, dismissed, and ridiculed workers for wearing PPE.

Third, worker concern with the lack of an economic safety net undermined workplace health and safety. Workers described practices that in some cases were non-compliant with California labor standards. Workers reported being told not to come back to work after requesting a day off, being written up for something minor after taking time off, being required to present a doctor's note for any use of sick pay, or being advised not to report work related injuries and to instead use paid sick time.

As a result, due to fear of losing their job and not having any income, some workers did not report illnesses or worked while sick, thereby increasing the risk of the spread of bird flu. Yet our research also indicated it is possible to have worker centered practices.

In a couple cases, workers interviewed indicated that their employers did express greater concern for workers than cattle in production, provided training on bird flu and worker safety, approved and encouraged necessary sick time, provided necessary work gear and PPE, and routinely met with workers to communicate updates.

So we might ask, given the challenges in dairy farm work in the bird flu crisis, how can we improve dairy farm work practices to mitigate the risk of bird flu among workers and the public? And now remember the issue I presented at the outset that unless we're grappling with the fact that 753 California dairies tested positive, but only 840 people that have come into contact with sick animals have been tested nationwide. You know, we're not asking, we're not talking about the right issues.

So our report lists six policy recommendations to extend bird flu mitigation efforts from animals to humans. First, require employers to provide supplemental paid sick leave for bird flu testing, vaccination, and medical monitoring, and in cases of illness, exclusion, pay, including expected over time until symptoms subside.

Second, make bird flu testing available for workers in dairy farms and other affected industries like poultry and their families. Ensure that hospitals and clinics are testing patients experiencing flu symptoms. Third, require employers to share any known bird flu illness or symptoms with employees, subcontracted employees, to any relevant labor representative, CDPH, and Cal/OSHA.

Fourth, increase investment in the enforcement of existing workplace health and safety standards. Fifth, leverage existing investment in worker education with public agency efforts to mitigate bird flu spread. And sixth, prioritize employers that meet and exceed compliance standards in the awarding of public subsidies and public procurement contracts.

So in conclusion, dairy farm workers experience workplace hazards and non-compliance that present great risk for the spread of bird flu from animals to humans, yet we can better protect workers and the public through policies that extend mitigation efforts from animals to people such as those listed in our report. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and take any questions or comments from Committee Members. Senator Alvarado-Gil, you can go. Followed by Senator Monique Limón.

Okay. Thank you so much for both your presentations. I want to be respectful of the information you're sharing here today, Dr. Flores, and want to invite you to make that report available to this committee. I think, you know, it's helpful for us to see the data that you're giving us, where it came from, and how it was obtained.

I have a lot of respect for the UC system and the research and, you know, I want to take note of what you're saying. As you were presenting, I was also looking at the CDC data that's available online. CDC is reporting 27 human cases and the County of Tulare is reporting 18 of those, which to me is telling me that we have quite an issue here in California to solve.

And so listening to what you're saying, I'm also, I also have the data before me of the millions of dollars that's being invested in PPE, the millions of dollars that's being invested in robust testing, and that partnership between California Public Health, California Department of Food and Agriculture, and the USDA.

So I'm trying to figure out where that misses and if there's a miss that we need to focus on. So is it an issue that the PPE is not available even though we're investing all these millions of dollars? Is it about utilization and education? Is it that we're just not taking this seriously? What is the core to the why that this data is becoming available?

The current efforts have been focused on animals. Even if you look at the mission of the agencies that are providing that funding, it's focused on food and agriculture, not people. And so the challenge is how to extend those efforts so that they protect people. And very basic things like supplemental paid sick leave.

If someone, you know, for someone to test, making testing available. You know, those are simple things we don't think about. One thing I will mention, also relevant to your question, is that when the animals are sick, the workers continue to work. Someone has to take care of those animals.

And so our entire approach has been focused on quarantining animals, trying to stop the spread among animals. We haven't focused enough on what it means for the workers. Because even if animals are sick, workers still have to give them injections, medicine, they still have to milk the cow so they won't get mastitis. And we have to ask ourselves, how are we protecting workers?

Yeah, okay, I don't disagree with that. I do feel that having an animal emergency approach is the right approach for California, being that the gross impact on our poultry and dairy industry, we're seeing the response for these agencies, and I feel very grateful that we have that response.

I also heard that $100 million are being invested into vaccine studies. We do not currently have a vaccine for H5N1, although there's a lot of education for employees and employers around seasonal flu vaccines. So I do feel confident in the public health approach to ensuring the prevention.

You know, I, you know, I'm not discounting the workers and what they're experiencing, but I'm also looking at the numbers, and I want to make sure that, you know, again, that there's education around this virus. I mean, it's not the COVID 19 virus that we dealt with and the mass hysteria that we dealt with, you know, four or five years ago. But, you know, what you're saying makes sense in terms of you still need workers to take care of the animals.

But based on my study, and based on what I'm reading, I'm also noting that the illnesses are, and not to discount, but the illnesses are mild compared to what we saw with something like COVID 19 or what we've seen with some other viruses that have that zoonetic disease categories.

So I want to be sympathetic of the workers cause, but I feel very confident that taking that animal health emergency approach is what's working right now in California. And that's what I'm hearing from the experts in the room. If I'm wrong, I'd love to see your report to get that data.

I think what the experts shared earlier was that the configurations of H5N1 that we've seen do not currently pose a great risk for human health, and they're also not very transmissible. But the D11 strand is a variation of H5N1 that does concern public health experts.

That one appeared for the first time in Merced County in November, around the time we were doing our research. And to Senator Cortese's question about, you know, what relevance do bird migrations have for the animal approach that you're talking about?

So the migration season that there is the only wildlife preserve for birds in the state, I believe is in Merced County. And so the birds fly by right around the time that that case presented itself on a duck farm. When we drove around, we looked at the dairies. They were right by where the birds migrate.

So, you know, it may be that this past season there was only one case of, you know, D11 jumping from birds to cows and not, you know, spreading to humans and not causing any severe consequences. But the birds will return. And so I think what the experts would say is that we have to be vigilant about the measures that we can take to protect workers and the public's health.

And the last thing I'll say is when we have spoken with CDPH, they've made it very clear that employers have to hand over information about their workers for a CDPH to do their job. They can't if the employers don't hand over that information. And so, you know, maybe more fact finding that's necessary is to find out like, what does it look like, you know, usually when CDPH engages with the employer.

Can I ask one more question to the public health director? So, director, excuse me, Director Elliott, you mentioned about the PPE stockpiling and offering information. I'm on your website and you've got multi-language education for the community. Are you seeing this in neighboring counties as well, that the information is publicly available, and that we're doing a great job in terms of putting the PPE available?

Well, again, I'll say that, right at the beginning, we have a very eager emergency preparedness team. And so they again, when we recognized a number of dairies and we just knew that it would impact us. So we did begin to stockpile and it was not easy to initially distribute. It wasn't here yet.

So we made it available to the dairies and shared with them. We went through the creameries, we went through Farm Bureau, went through any organization that could communicate with them all. We actually gave some PPE to them to say if it's going to be easier for them to take it from you, and also made it available like we will deliver it. If you want to come to our agency, we will get it out to you. And it was not widely accepted at that time.

And as I understand it, other counties, they got no response on it either. But I will say that as soon as we did have our first infected dairy, we started to pop up the pods and appointed distribution. And we made it so that it was easy for the time of day and everything for dairy owners to come.

We worked with our ag commissioner. We worked... Again, we have what Tulare County has, which I'm not sure everybody else does, is the dairy inspectors also, that have a very good relationship with our dairy owners. And so between the creameries and the Farm Bureau and that they really could connect and they trusted them a little bit more.

So, you know, after Covid, people are like, you know, you're overreacting and all of that. And maybe that was coming out with, we don't need this PPE, but they did come and get it. At that time, we also began a joint information communications team with five of the counties that are close by that we knew had dairies.

In terms of making sure that we shared information, we did some joint statements that we put out. I will say that Tulare County did truly lead that. And again, because we just week after week, and as Dr. Jones noted, the amount of dairies that became infected was overwhelming. And it was happening in Tulare County, and it didn't. It took a little longer to get to the ones outside of Tulare County, and they don't have as many dairies.

So what they did in terms of the joint information communications between the media's team, I think we really did share really well. We have been on calls weekly Tuesday mornings, and CDC and CDFA are on there. And since we've been through a lot of it, Tulare County has been the person who sort of led some of the, like, this is how we've treated it.

This is the information that we've created. We created dairy owner packets, dairy worker packets, so that it could be distributed out to everybody. So what they can do, what to look for. So I can't answer to other websites or anything, but I really do feel it has been a team effort, and we're very proud of the amount of PPE we gave out. And we've hit every dairy that we have in our county.

Senator Limón.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, for convening this and having this discussion. And I appreciate the testimony that's just been giving here and also hearing from my colleague, you know, Senator Alvarado-Gil, about trying to distinguish, right, what the approach Is. Is the approach to center around an animal based problem or a human based problem?

And I gather, you know, kind of picking up on that. I gather that, you know, it is, you know, excuse my non-sophisticated language, but you know, I gather that it is, you know, step A is looking at the animal based problem. But I also hear from this particular panel that it could, the new strain could make its way to being this, to this being a concern and being a multi-approach. And it sounds like we're starting to think about a multi-approach, not just animal based but also human based.

And the description was we need to be vigilant, and in describing the vigilance that is needed to ensure that it remains an animal based problem and not a human based problem, some of the things that have been described are increased education, PPE, and also, you know, sick paid leave. Like we don't want people who are sick to also be the ones taking care of the sick animals and then perpetuate, you know, a spread that is concerning.

So my, you know, my question is, in addition to the three things that I heard, education, PPE, you know, sick time, what else should we be thinking about to ensure that this remains animal based and not and doesn't pose a risk to humans that would elevate this as a formal multi-approach of animal problem and also human problem?

I don't want to, you know, underestimate the potential, you know, impact to, to humans on this. So far there's been no human to human passing. And so that right there is what we're really maintaining in terms of public health also. It has been mild symptoms, there has been no hospitalizations, at least within our areas.

But what you talk about in terms of the subtyping to see the strains, that is another thing that's public health that we want to make sure that we continue to look at. Because once you start seeing, seeing that you're having some mutations of it... The importance of a flu vaccine, it doesn't protect against H5N1, but it does protect against the flu.

And so that would protect somebody who possibly could have the flu and then get H5N1, which could then, again, you don't know what that could create in terms of how it's passed along since right now flu can be passed human to human, but H5N1 isn't. But with that be something that opens up to that.

So I think it is continuing to look at the data, the science, as we have. And you know, again, when we, when we test the workers, you know, we follow, basically, do they have the symptoms? Are they at high risk? Meaning have they been with an animal. You know, what we have found is conjunctivitis has pretty much been the common issue that they've had.

And we need to continue to look at that, look at the subtyping, testing through our surveillance to make sure that we are continuing to see it at a... Since we have not had another positive case in quite a while, hoping that this is now something where we have had containment based on the animals and all that. And just watching that.

And I will add. So thank you for summarizing some of the key recommendations from our report. Testing, paid sick leave, education, enforcement. There's also the need to share information about illness and symptoms with the various employees, labor representatives, CDPH, Cal/OSHA.

That case in Merced that was probably the most concerning to folks in public health was not public knowledge until the World Health Organization reported it months later. So having, you know, requiring that sort of communication. And then the last thing I'll mention is we need to ask ourselves, how do we support farmers that want to do the right thing? And so much of this industry is propped up with public subsidies.

We need to think about how we prioritize those employers that meet and exceed standards with public subsidies and public procurement contracts because there are growers, there are farmers that want to do the right thing. And we have to ask ourselves as a public, how do we support them?

Senator Cortese, do you have any questions on this panel? Okay. Well, you know, I grew up, there's a lot of interest for me, obviously representing the southern Central Valley on this particular issue. But what really got me going even more so was the fact that I had loved ones that got sick.

Now, I didn't know if it was bird flu or not, that this was sometime last year. And it really got me asking a lot of questions about is it going from human to human or from animal to human. And the first panel, they've been working really well to ensure that Californians are protected.

And I've learned a lot along the process. And my family, my loved ones don't work in agriculture. So it just made me even more curious. Right. Like, what are we missing? What more can we do? I know that in Tulare County you mentioned there was you've been working, you've been using your lab to do some subtyping.

Just kind of wanted to get a sense of when did that begin? Because I think even now my understanding is that the direction from the CDC is subtyping of flu type A is done if there's, if there, if the individual or if the person is hospitalized. And I just want to make sure that I'm here on that, if that is accurate, and if that is something, if that's a protocol that is being followed at the local level as well, or if that's...

So they, you know, they have... Actually, since September of 2024, we have, through our healthcare partners, anybody who has tested positive for influenza A are sending the swabs to our public health lab to test for H5. And I have information here that between September 1, 2024 through March 3, 2025 there were approximately 1900 patients tested using methods that would have detected the influenza A H5. And so far, none of those samples have come back as H5. So that is another way of doing the surveillance. And so, you know, wastewater is something in Tulare County.

We, it's up to our wastewater treatment plants to opt in to do it. We have, you know, reached out more than once, and nobody has opted in. But this is another way because this is actually getting, you know, those who are testing positive for the flu that you wouldn't have looked at H5N1 in the past. These are now ways of us sampling people who are coming in and testing positive for influenza A.

And were there protocols in place back in September to say, if there's these, you know, flu providers, and are there, if there's individuals with these symptoms, you should therefore test? Because it... Were there any gaps in identifying and then testing?

I don't, I don't think... Well, the protocol, again, for just testing straight for H5N1, whereas it's, you know, they do the testing with all the different assays and everything at the point of contact. That was, again, you know, we followed the CDPH testing guidelines and that had to do with, you know, they were describing signs and symptoms of flu, plus they had had contact with an animal. And as I've said, too, is that I think that everyone that we've seen has had the conjunctivitis. That's been the one common thing.

And they did the conjunctival swabs. So I don't know if anything has been missing. If somebody came in and reported that they had these symptoms, plus they'd been in contact with an animal, they would have tested for the H5N1 there. But these are just, again, samples that are people testing positive for influenza A. And then we are then taking it further and they're sending it to the lab to see and do further subtyping to see if there's any H5. And thus far, none of them have.

But Tulare County is unique in the sense that you guys were doing your own subtyping separately, from my understanding, from what the state is doing?

There might be. I can't answer. I know that we're doing it in Tulare County, but I can't answer that there might be other labs that are doing this. I just know to ours. I'm sorry. Just.

Okay. Okay. All right. Well, I appreciate your time, the information, and for being here today, and we'll go ahead and move on to our final panel, so if the third panel can come on up.

And we have here today Bill Mattos, President of the California Poultry Federation, David Will, Vice President of Sales for Chino Valley Ranchers and Doreen Dyt, field representative for California Dairies. Thank you to the three of you. Thank you for your patience and I-- Bill, feel free to begin when you are ready.

Certainly. Madam Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for having us today.

I'm going to be relatively brief, if I can be brief, because I think the first panel actually was able to explain to you everything we do because we work so closely with CDFA and USDA and our industry has been dealing with the bird flu for probably 20 years, starting with Newcastle disease, which, as you know, we wiped out 170 million dollars worth of birds south of the Tehachapis.

And our biosecurity was so good that we kept it from moving past the Tehachapis, which is in the poultry area. So I do have a map. The first map shows you where our poultry is located. We'll give you an idea. We're in the Central Valley for the most part.

And I think you have it in front of you. I don't know if we have it up there. I don't know how to use this, but whatever. And so we will show you, the poultry map is the Central Valley. And actually that is probably where most of the dairy industry industry is as well.

And we raise about 250 million chickens a year for meat. We raise probably about 7 million turkeys. However, the turkey industry will almost be gone because of the loss of so many turkeys and bird flu. Foster Farm decided to close its plant and is going to turn it over to chickens rather than turkeys.

And the egg industry has lost a significant amount. You'll hear from our friend here next to me. But biosecurity has been a big deal for us, as you'll see these people. This is how you go onto a ranch, poultry ranch. You're not allowed on there without a hat, coveralls, boots, disinfecting your shoes before you go on.

Some facilities we make you take a shower before you go on others you have to take a shower before you go off. And so it's very bio secure. And we've been doing this for many, many years. And our industry is very well educated about it.

And so we try to keep anybody off the facility that doesn't belong there. We don't give a lot of tours. Like we're not one of these agricultural organizations for the most part. Some egg people do that are smaller, but we don't give a lot of tours, unless it's to you.

I know we've taken the Senator on a tour before, and I think that's something that we would do to show you how we run our operations. But for the most part, any trucks coming on have to be sprayed. Their tires are sprayed, they're disinfected. They can't get onto the farm without that happening.

And we don't even allow the Highway Patrol on unless they have a real good permit or they have basically their trucks and their cars disinfected. So it's a big deal to us because as you can see, we've lost a lot of birds over the years. And it's something that we take very, very seriously.

I know they talked about the money coming in from the Federal Government now to do more biosecurity, which we think is great. I think, you know, our work with CDFA and USDA is probably the best in the nation. I think our state and federal partnerships in California are better than-- I know all my colleagues in the poultry industry.

I'm probably the oldest serving executive in the poultry industry in America right now. This is my 34th year and I've seen just about everything in the industry. And it's been something that we can really learn from our industries. And I know David will talk to you a little about what they do.

But it's very sophisticated and it's very complex, you know, so we develop relationships that we think are outstanding. And we've had a really good year. Even when they had the bird flu in 2022, we were very little affected, our industry because we were so biosecure.

What really hit us hard was when the dairy industry contacted it actually from chickens, I think, in Michigan, from what I hear. And it actually got to California. And our dairies are so big. And if you look at our map, our poultry industry, our dairy industry is on top of each other and we're very good friends.

Our dairy expert here speaking to us, it's so ironic because she lives a mile from me and we live in a little town of Newman, which is kind of hilarious when you think about the fact that we're both here talking about two different industries. But it's really important that we all get along and try to learn from each other.

And the good news to the poultry industry is we're getting somewhat of herd immunity because our egg industry, for example, and our turkey industry is really scared to death about what's been happening at the end of last year because we lost so many birds. Things are looking much better now and we're excited about that.

What my asks, and I don't want to go into more detail, you can ask me any questions you want. But our asks to you is continue funding CDFA and making sure our agencies in California work together.

Because what we would like to see is a faster process somehow if the CDFA and the USDA could clean, disinfect, depopulate the birds if we have to do that, and then get us back into the barn quickly so we can sell more eggs or more meat or whatever.

Right now it's taking a little bit time, like few months to get back in and repopulate, which is the reason you have a shortage of certain products, as you know. And so there's got to be a way that we can work together and try to get back into business quicker. And I think CDFA knows that.

USDA knows that we just need to work together. There's a couple other agencies in California who don't understand as well as CDFA and them. So I think if we work with them a little closer, we could make it much more efficient. And also CDFA and the laboratory system are very important to us. You fund them very well.

Our lab system is amazing. We've got one of the best lab systems in America and we get our tests back relatively quickly. Now when the dairy industry got infected, there were a lot of testing going on. So we actually shipped some out of state to actually get tested. Cleaning and disinfection is a big deal for us.

We spend a lot of time in our barns cleaning and disinfecting and people are dressed and all the PPE they need. And you heard from the Secretary of Agriculture earlier that we haven't had any bird flu in the poultry industry transferred to people. So that's good news for us.

We're not saying it's never going to happen, but it's been very good news because we really take it seriously to keep everybody secure. And I'm probably going to stop there. I just want you to know that our ask is to keep our agencies working together. Anything you can give them to help us, we appreciate it, and it's a pleasure to be up here as the last panel.

Thank you for being here. Okay. And we'll hear from David Will.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Senator Hurtado and happy birthday. And other distinguished members of the California Senate Agriculture Committee. My name is David Will and I'm Vice President of Sales for Chino Valley Ranchers.

I work for third generation family owned and operated cage free organic and pastured egg producer located in California. Our company owns four family owned and operated farms in California and one in Texas. In addition, we source for more than 200 independent family owned and operated farms throughout the Midwest.

Like many of our fellow egg farmers, we have been directly impacted by Avian influenza striking one of our California farms at the end of December and forcing the euthanasia of 180,000 organic laying hens. At the time of the infection, we were following Dr. Jones' state order to keep our organic hens inside.

The farm impacted was following strict biosecurity program under the auspices of the National Poultry Improvement Plan, the California Department of Food and Agriculture Secure Food Supply Program in addition to the California Egg Quality Assurance Program which happened to win the Al Gore golden hammer for government industry working together beginning in the mid-90s, well before the FDA egg safety rule came into effect.

At many levels, our program is superior to the federal rule and has kept Californians safe for decades. So what changed? We've asked ourselves that many times. Why has Avian influenza swept the nation in 2015 and again in 2022? California was mostly spared in the 2015 outbreak.

Egg layers were not impacted in California until 2023 when a pocket emerged in Northern California. Again, Southern California was spared the major disruption until October of 2024. Throughout the end of December when California has lost more than 10 of our 15 million egg laying hens..

Since our state has begun testing dairies, as you've heard, more than 700 of the 1200 dairies have tested positive. Six of those weeks before we heard about in the county where our farm and another farm were located, both tested positive for Avian influenza within two weeks of hearing hearing that the dairies were positive.

The dairy stagnant source of virus has been found in nasal cow swabs in their noses, milk and in the urine.

In the world of eggs, when we receive word of an egg farmer testing as a non-negative, United Egg Producers holds an industry call and alerts hundreds of concerned members to the exact location of the non-negative result.

This allows us to know where the current hot spots are and to give us warning to step up any biosecurity that we can.

These positive trigger the USDA to start drawing circles on a map notifying all egg producers to the risk that can trigger mandatory testing and permitting to require even as much as a garden hose off the farm. Currently, the movement of non-lactating cows from dairy to dairy is widely unrestricted and no testing is required.

This movement has caused for widespread virus plumes on the dairies impacting the workers, birds, cats, which we've heard several times, and rodents. To date, more than 200 species of mammals have tested positive for Avian influenza.

This dairy harborage of infection cannot be overlooked as more than 30 million egg layers since October in 2024 have been infected with the dairy strain of Avian influenza. If you look over the map of California positive herds and where all the recently 10 million impacted layers have lived, it's not hard to draw the conclusion of the overlap.

Our biosecurity within California is well above industry standards as many other farms have contracted Avian influenza. Several I know are shower in, shower out facilities. Even with these measures, many of these producers have been impacted two times with our first national detection in February of 22.

Some producers that follow strict biosecurity in the Midwest have tested positive three times. We learned a lot since the 2015 outbreak, but clearly the strain of the virus is different and we need help. We need epidemiologists on our farm right after detection to help identify how the virus arrived.

We want to be good barnyard partners, but understanding that this strain of virus needs a different approach. We do not want to impact trade on a global level, but we do need support from our partners to make the following happen.

We need a strong dairy movement restriction and a vaccine program to start the harborage on dairies, support from the broiler industry to work on a vaccine for egg laying hens to allow us to be able to vaccinate locations where the virus is hot and to work perhaps to a day of age vaccine program to build immunity over time.

The impact to a family owned and operated farm is daunting. Even with the federal indemnity program which was just recently improved. The program does not make a company whole to cover the cost to restock, but it does help.

Currently with the large disruption in the national flock, the availability of replacement birds to impacted farms can be stretched out for months to years. The major impact is lack of replacement birds in the beginning of the process to repopulate.

Being organic and laying brown eggs, these birds to replace our flock that we lost will take between 12 and 18 months before we're able to begin repopulation. In addition, none of these programs take into account the toll the non negative detection has on our workers. These workers strive every day for animal health and security.

And then one day they're forced to euthanize the entire farm. They are exposed to the rigors of mass euthanasia and the farm, they face the insecurity for their jobs.

For our owners they have done everything possible to repopulate our farm, but today, two and a half months past detection, we do not have a single bird scheduled to move on to this farm. We do need assistance to ensure we can maintain a domestic supply of eggs for our country. Thank you.

Well, thank you. Okay, and up next, Doreen.

Good afternoon-- Good afternoon, Senators. My name is Doreen Dyt and I'm a field representative for California Dairies Incorporated. And I'm here to give an update on the H5N1 virus and its impact in the California dairy industry. So a quick background on who California Dairies Incorporated, or CDI, is.

We're the largest dairy cooperative in the state of California, owned by roughly 300 dairy farm families located from San Diego County in the south to Sacramento county in the north. This map shows our manufacturing and membership footprint.

We have six manufacturing facilities located from Turlock down to Bakersfield and then jumping right into H5N1 and the way it impacted our dairy cows. Overwhelmingly we saw farms with cows with flu like symptoms.

And like the prior panels discussed, there was significant decreases in milk production on all of our farms, which was devastating in a variety of ways. Additionally, we saw increased treatment costs, unfortunately increased mortalities and breeding issues on our farms.

And truly we don't know the long term impacts of this virus seen as it is very new impacting our dairy cattle. So for the bulk of the presentation, I really wanted to talk about what worked and what didn't work when it came to agency coordination.

And so to start with what didn't work first, we want to just acknowledge that of course this is a new virus for the dairy industry and for farmers, for dairy farmers especially, there was a frustration, and I'm sure with public health agencies as well, there was frustration because of the lack of understanding of how it was being transmitted from farm to farm, what groups were vulnerable, what weren't.

And so because of this, we communicated extensively with our employees around safety protocols because of the virus, we provided personal protective equipment and we just made sure that of course with our animal health and human health were of utmost importance to us.

Next, a large concern we had locally, like the prior panels discussed as well, was that there wasn't an ability at the time to locally test.

So with the vast majority of our farms located in the heart of the Central Valley, we had to send all of our milk samples up to Davis and then they actually had to be confirmed positive out of state. And so this just added a logistical bottleneck that I think should be addressed moving forward.

At the state level, we just wanted to express the importance about border checkpoints and the importance to maintain proper procedures and protocols at those border checkpoints. I personally know of dairy farmers that are still moving cattle through, whether that be into Oregon or into Nevada.

And those state border checkpoints are still not requiring the correct paperwork that should be there.

And then federally, we just felt like on the farmer side, there was maybe a lack of coordination between communicating with CDFA and USDA and sometimes there was a level of farmer confusion on who was coming on the farm and whether they were permitted to be there.

So those were some of the concerns we felt going through the outbreak. But at the same time, there were many achievements and we have so many people to thank for their support through this entire outbreak for the dairy industry.

Like the prior panel discussed, there was free personal protective equipment distribution facilitated through the California Department of Public Health and local public health departments. I know personally my dad requested PPE and the next day it was sent out in bulk from CDPH. He didn't have to go pick it up.

It was delivered to the dairy, which was extremely helpful in facilitating personal protective equipment for our employees. Next, we just want to thank State Vet Jones as well as CDFA. Overall, they were great at communicating with our industry and were extremely supportive throughout the outbreak.

Additionally, early on in the outbreak, there was it was decided to coordinate milk testing through the milk handlers, us as processors or cooperatives, and the lab, rather than having the dairy farmers collecting milk samples. And we just felt this helped streamline testing.

It made it so much more efficient and reliable to have the milk handlers being the ones to send in the samples. And it helped put dairies that were infected on quarantine faster. And then finally, of course, we want to thank USDA. Through APHIS and FSA offices, there have been extensive programs in place to help our farmers.

This has obviously been an extremely devastating ordeal for our farmers, both financially and emotionally. And so we're just extremely thankful to the USDA for all of their support. Thank you for your time. That concludes my presentation.

Thank you to three. I'll go ahead and open it up to questions and comments and answers for Committee Members.

I appreciate closing with this panel because I always appreciate hearing directly from our farmers and industry partners. I mentioned the issue around our backyard chicks. It is chick season. Any concern from our commercial poultry and egg farmers around this increase in Californians wanting to have their own backyard flocks?

Well, I've been asked this question by the media many times, and every time it happens in an area where I get called, we oppose it. We oppose any chickens in a backyard just because of the bird flu and what it can spread. But unfortunately I think I lose in every city because they approve them in every city.

And so I think our goal is to educate as many people as we can. We have information we can send. We try to reach out to people and let them know what they need to do for their birds.

I have very many friends, just the little town we live in that have birds in their backyards and they do a pretty good job. But when Beverly Hills in California decided they were going to put chickens in their backyards, they put them in their backyards and decided, oh my God, they poop. And so they turned them loose.

So Beverly Hill was full of chickens all over. And that's what happens a lot of times because people don't realize it's not that easy to raise chickens. I mean, it takes a little bit of work.

And so we don't encourage it, but it's pretty hard to stop, especially now with prices of eggs and people want to put their own chickens in the backyard. So we urge them and you could help as well, CDFA sends them to us or CDFA has information for backyard flocks. UC Davis has Maurice Pitesky who deals with backyard flocks.

So it's out there for them, but it's a concern because a lot of times over the years, I don't know if Dave's seen that, but our companies in the Central Valley, when you see a big backyard flock that's next to a big commercial operation, we will try to go in and buy it from them, buy all their chickens so that they don't have any more.

And that works sometimes because we just need the biosecurity. So that's kind of where we are on that issue. You may have a different idea.

Yeah. Our biggest concern is an egg layer, unlike in the broiler industry, we'll have a bird for one to two years on the farm producing eggs for us. And to get her to that age, it usually takes 16 weeks to 18 weeks of growth to produce, to get her to farm, to begin to lay eggs.

And during that first 12 to 14 weeks, there is a very strict biosecurity program and vaccination schedule that we follow based on where we are in the United States. California has, we have our own unique program for vaccinations. When you're getting day-of-age chicks, they've been naive to all of those future vaccines.

Sure, they're given 2, 3 day of age at the hatchery but they have no follow up vaccines to that. The only thing I can say to add to that is we lost a farm due to exotic Newcastle disease.

And when we drew our circle around the map before we could repopulate, being in a rural area, they had to go door to door. They had over 60 premises within a 1 km circle on a map of our farm that had a backyard chicken or two and most of those also tested positive.

So it just, it can be a harborage of disease in the environment. Sure people want to do it, it can be done but again what Mr. Mattos said is important. There are great resources on CDFA and state labs to take a look.

If people have chickens that die or want to know what the diseases look like, they have resources to do that and certainly follow that.

Any additional questions from Committee Members? I'm just impressed and shocked at the same time with the time frame that is needed, right, to be able to make up for what has been lost.

I mean what more can can be done if at least on our end to be able to support you all that you want to stress today.

We work with great people within CDFA. We are far ahead of a lot of other states in the union. We've been definitely dealt a curveball with something different that we haven't seen. The lag time is, seems to be shortening.

But we do need to work with our barnyard partners in finding some source of vaccine or vaccination program that we can accept on a national level and international level in order to eliminate this in the current situation.

I think Dave's right. The vaccination program is a little complex because the layer industry needs it I think and the dairy industry needs it. The broiler industry doesn't want it unless the trade is okay. Right now our trading partners do not let us send anything to different countries if there's a vaccine.

But I think this is all going to take care-- Everybody's talking about it now even in USDA. So I think it will take care of itself as we move forward. And so like Dave says, we need to work together with the dairy, with all of us to make this work.

But you can really help by making sure CDFA is funded correctly. I know I'm going to talk to the public health directors next week. They talked to Daria already. I'm going to give them a presentation next week of California of public health directors.

And so whatever you can do to keep our agencies working together in California and funded I think is important.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I think, you know, the fact that they're taking a one health approach to this, to this issue, to addressing the Avian Influenza, it's-- I think it's made a huge difference. I think we could have been in a much worse situation, right.

And I think that goes to the work that you all have been doing and partnering with them and communicating back and forth. I want to thank you for coming, for staying here for, you know, until the end.

You saved the best for last.

That's what I like to say. That's right. No, you guys have all been very helpful in providing us with a better understanding of what we've been dealing with here at hand. And this is not something that just impacts farmers or poultry. The consumer is feeling it across the country, I would say. So thank you for your time.

And with that, I will go ahead and just open it up for public comment. So if anybody has something to say, if you can come on up to the microphone, state your name, organization, and if you could keep it brief, we would appreciate that.

All right. Good afternoon, Senators, Madam Chair, pleasure to see everybody again. I'm Jimmy Fremgen from Food Solutions Action. We are a nonprofit charity that works on alternative protein. And as the Senator just mentioned in her closing remarks, there's impact across the entire sector, not just for the barnyard, but also for alternative protein producers, including alternative eggs.

Alternative egg companies are headquartered in California. The largest alternative protein companies in the world are headquartered in California. And as demand increases in the shell egg sector, we're also seeing demand increase in the alternative egg sector.

There are a tremendous number of applications that can be used for alternative eggs that could in turn lessen the impact on consumers both at the grocery store and also lower the impact on producers and other food suppliers that need shell eggs in their production means.

We're excited to work with the Legislature to work with CDFA to work with producers and stakeholders to try to bring alternative proteins into this conversation to alleviate some of the pressures on consumers and producers.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. We really appreciate this hearing today. I've learned so much. I'm Farrah McDaid Ting from the California County Health Executives Association, CHIAAC, and we represent the public health folks in our 61 local health jurisdictions in California.

I do want to say you heard a couple nods to the need for continuing to support local public health departments and the CDFA and Ag side as well.

We just want to say thank you to the Legislature for continuing to sustain future of public health funding which allows local health jurisdictions to hire the people we need to do this type of work. Also, we heard a lot about labs, and there is a difference between human labs and animal labs.

And so there's a, you know, they're two separate systems, although there has been some coordination during this outbreak, which we appreciate. And lastly, the need for technology, continuing to support Cal Connect, the my CAvax system, and other kind of background technology tools that public health at all levels and health care providers use.

And then lastly, I hope you heard that county and city public health departments are the ones who are interfacing with the farmers, with the workers, and with all the community members. Thank you.

Good afternoon Chair and Members. Beth Malinowski with SEIU California, wanted to second the appreciation for the hearing today. It's not every day that we have our Senate Health and Senate Ag colleagues together. As someone who also has a public health degree, just really appreciate the conversation today and the deep thinking that's going into this area of work.

As you all know, SEU probably represents our public health employees both at the state and county and local jurisdictions.

And like my colleague from CHIAAC shared, over the past couple of years, through our investment and the future of public health, we really are setting ourselves up to be better prepared for situations like this so we can cross-collaborate across departments, work with industry, work with consumers, and work with workers that are directly impacted to make sure we're doing right by our communities.

So look forward to continuing the conversations and trying to find those synergies to protect everyone, including our animals and our workers. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Anybody else? All right, okay. Well, today we face the stark reality of the Avian influenza. It's not just numbers on a report or on a presentation. It is the livelihoods of farmers, of workers, the health of our communities, and the stability of our food system that are at stake.

I look forward to continuing to work with everyone in this room and beyond and have further conversations of how we can make and improve upon the system that we have to ensure that we have food security for all and food affordability and health, good health for everyone. So with that, that concludes our hearing today.

Thank you so much for your attendance.