WEST SPRINGFIELD — With fair season approaching, organizers turn wary eyes toward the spread of avian flu among poultry flocks and cattle herds with safety outweighing the desire to put on the show.
“Everybody’s eyes are wide open,” said Eugene J. Cassidy, president and CEO of the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield. “The fear would be transmission. You don’t want to put animals together who can transmit a disease.”
Bonnie Burr, assistant director of the University of Connecticut Extension, said avian flu was a sobering topic at a recent statewide meeting of Connecticut 4-H programs.
“We were talking about how fast we can shut down a fair,” Burr told The Republican in a phone interview.
She said 4-H’ers in Connecticut have used toy chicken stand-ins to describe their poultry projects at fairs in the last two years. The kids have a sense of humor about it and, although disappointed, learn about containing disease.
Thus far in 2024, there have been three detections of avian flu in domestic birds in Massachusetts, according to the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture. The state continues to encourage domestic flock owners to practice heightened biosecurity measures by preventing their birds from co-mingling with wild flocks.
In the rural Hampshire County Hilltowns, the Cummington Fair has had no birds on the grounds at all for recent fairs as a precaution, said Albert D. Judd, president of the Hillside Agricultural Society which puts on the 155-year-old fair.
A cow bovine greets visitors at the 2022 Cummington Fair. Organizers are monitoring guidelines to stop the spread of avian flu.
“This has been an ongoing topic of our regular board meetings since January. We take things like this seriously,” he said. We want to ensure the health and well- being of both livestock and guests of the fair.”
Current guidance from Massachusetts agriculture officials is to avoid gathering birds, he said. But concerns are growing about the dangers of spreading bird flu among lactating, that is currently milk-producing, dairy cattle.
“We will be monitoring it for sure,” Judd said.
The Cummington Fair is Aug. 22 to Aug 25.
Burr said federal guidelines call for the testing of lactating dairy cattle who are traveling over state lines.
Last week, officials in Wisconsin ordered that lactating dairy cattle be tested before traveling to fairs and exhibitions. Monday, Colorado agriculture officials told fair organizers that canceling shows is up to them, but that they need to be more vigilant and look out for signs of illness. Livestock owners should work with their veterinarian to test lactating dairy cattle for Influenza A within seven days before going to the event, Colorado officials wrote in their directive.
U.S. Department of Agriculture influenza guidelines require that all milk from cows at fairs be disposed of, not sold or fed to other livestock.
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This avian flu strain has been circulating in the United States since early 2022, carried and spread primarily by wild birds.
In March 2024, the virus was confirmed in dairy herds in Texas and Kansas and has since been found in other states.
But the closest it’s been found to New England in diary heards has been in Ohio and North Carolina, Burr said.
“When we see something getting closer here in the northeast, people will be very vigilant about it,” she said.
Dr. David Banach, UConn Health infectious diseases expert, said it was too soon to know exactly what the best advice will be.
“I think it’s something we do have to monitor heading into the fair season,” he said in a phone interview.
It seems like the virus doesn’t spread through milk or beef or poultry, he said, So pasteurizing milk and cooking meat adequately can help provide that extra layer of protection by killing off this particular virus as well as many other pathogens.
If the virus can spread from cattle to people, he said it’s most likely to spread to farm workers who spend time in prolonged contact. He thinks it’s unlikely that a visitor passing through a cattle exhibit at a fair would be in any danger.
Both Burr and Cassidy separately said how important veterinary screenings of animals heeded for fairs will be.
Burr said: “The veterinarian is the first line of defense in all of this,” she said.
Cassidy said too few are going into large animal veterinary as a profession.
