On April 1, the Idaho State Department of Agriculture reported its first case of the bird flu in cattle in Cassia County. Pictured in this file photo are uninfected dairy cows drinking water from a trough in Fruitland, Idaho. (Kirsten Strough/U.S. Department of Agriculture)
On a recent Monday morning, workers began their week on a large poultry farm in Franklin County, Washington, home to over 800,000 chickens.
By the end of the day, avian flu had been discovered among some of those chickens. By the end of the week, four workers came down with the illness, which had infected only a handful of other people in the U.S. And after two more days of testing by the Benton Franklin Health District, another 10 workers at the farm tested positive.
That outbreak, initially detected Oct. 14, represented the first human cases this year of the avian flu in the Pacific Northwest. The first human case in Oregon was confirmed Nov. 15, adding to mounting evidence that the flu is spreading to farmworker populations across the Western U.S. But efforts to test and monitor the disease among workers are spotty and inconsistent and leave the responsibility for getting tested on the laborers themselves, many of whom are undocumented and can’t afford to take time off if they test positive.