After 20 Upper Peninsula dairy workers all got a flu-like illness earlier this year, state officials investigated if it could be bird flu.
Milk testing showed the cows weren’t infected with the highly pathogenic avian influenza, H5N1 – a virus that has led to millions of chickens dying, infected 978 dairy herds and sickened dozens of people across the country.
But it took two weeks for the milk to be tested, according to an immigrant legal service, and even longer for farmworkers to get personal protective equipment when they needed it. The workers were also never tested bird flu…