Minnesota's Swine & U

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Hello, and welcome to Minnesota's swine and U podcast. Series, a university of Minnesota extension swine program. Today's podcast. Is a discussion about H. 5, influenza. My name is Sarah Sheikh Belke, your host, and I'm a swine extension educator with the University of Minnesota.

Joining me today in this discussion is Dr. Marie Culhane, professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine's Department of Veterinary Population Medicine. Marie's area of expertise is influenza. So with that, Marie, would you care to introduce yourself further.

Marie R Culhane:
Well, 1st of all, I want to start out with, thank you for the opportunity to be on your podcast. I think any information we can share about influenza is a good opportunity for everybody to learn a little bit more and learn how they can help with this common problem, because influenza is a problem that everybody faces humans and animals alike.

So thanks for that opportunity. And yeah, you've covered it all. I'm a professor. I've been here at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Minnesota. For 25 years, I would say the majority of that time my number one area of research has been influenza mostly in pigs, but really any species of animal that gets infected with influenza. And then even that human animal interface.

That's a fancy word for calling, you know the stuff we get from animals or the stuff that we give animals which has been really interesting. And so, yeah, pigs. And now cattle. And prior to that, turkeys and chickens, and occasionally dogs and horses and humans. And now we're getting into cats. So happy to be here and answer any questions you might have.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
All right. So I know recently you and your colleague, Dr. Carol Cardona, did a Q. And a. About H. 5. Influenza on the swine in Minnesota blog. And I thought that's a great basis for our podcast here, especially with outbreaks in dairy cattle, and the potential like you kind of already mentioned, the cross species spread. So you did mention this a little bit, but who or what is at risk of H5. Influenza.

Marie R Culhane:
Yeah, well, influenza is one of those viruses that's been around since 500 BC. And I would say, who is at risk is really any warm blooded species on the planet. So that includes all the mammals of which humans are mammals and all the avian species. So all the birds out there. What's interesting and what people don't know, or sometimes don't think of is that influenza viruses also infect marine mammals like whales and seals and walruses, and things like that. And there's influenza viruses that infect bats as well. But really any warm blooded avian or mammal is at risk for influenza virus infection. Certainly there's some that are higher risk than others, but we're all at some level of risk from influenza.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
And so I know pigs are at risk. So can you explain a little bit about how? How do pigs fit into kind of the influenza? Mix.

Marie R Culhane:
Yeah. So pigs have been really interesting and important players in influenza's history and science, because without pigs we never would have known what influenza was. So this goes all the way back to 1918, and now half the half the audience has fallen asleep. But we'll wake them up. Is that over 100 years ago there was the influenza pandemic that was associated with World War one, so the great 1918 influenza pandemic.

Sometimes they call it Spanish flu but that was the H1 and 1 virus. It was the 1st influenza virus ever discovered, and they didn't really know that influenza virus was a virus, you know. Back then they thought you knew it was evil spirits, or you went outside when your hair was wet and you got sick because you caught a cold or you got chilled, or something like that.

But it was because pigs got the virus from humans. And then people that studied those pigs later in the thirties, cultured influenza viruses from the pigs, and they found out that what was in the pigs these influenza viruses was also what made the human sick. And so we have actually pigs to thank for helping us discover influenza viruses.

But that said pigs are really susceptible, or at risk of getting influenza viruses from any species. So pigs have gotten influenza viruses 1st from other pigs. That's pretty obvious. But pigs have gotten influenza viruses from humans and pigs have gotten influenza viruses from birds.

And the other things that pigs do, especially our pigs. I would just call out Minnesota here. Our pigs in Minnesota are very healthy. Our farmers do it, and our veterinarians do a great job of keeping our pigs healthy. So our pigs get infected with influenza viruses in Minnesota, and they're so healthy they feel sick for a couple days, and then they get over the virus.

But they don't stop shedding the virus, so they're able to spread it to other pigs, or sometimes to humans. But the other thing pigs do is that because they are at risk or susceptible is the word. We use a lot in virus research, because pigs are so susceptible they're able to get

Infected with more than one virus at one time, and when they get infected with more than one virus at the same time, virus A and virus B can mix together, and they'll make a new virus virus C, for example.

Or they'll get infected with an H. 3 n. 2, and then they'll get infected with an h. 1 n. One, and they'll reassort that virus, and out comes an h. 1 n. One n. 2 from the pig. So that's what pigs do we call that reassortment? So pigs are really good at mixing up the influenza viruses, and our pigs are so healthy and well cared for that they don't often die from influenza. They just kind of spread it and change it and move it on.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Yeah, interesting. So is that one of the reasons why the industry works really hard at trying to keep our pigs healthy, especially when it comes to this influenza virus.

Marie R Culhane:
Yeah, it's 1 of the reasons why we do so many things to help fight influenza virus in pig farms, and people do them to various degrees and levels. Right? So you can vaccinate our pigs against influenza virus, and that helps them really fight off. Severe disease doesn't prevent infection, but it keeps them from getting sick and dying.

The other thing we do is as a group of swine veterinarians, and with the national pork boards support. We recommend that everybody that works with pigs on a regular basis gets vaccinated against the seasonal human influenza. So the one you're supposed to get every fall. So you don't get sick, and you don't get hospitalized.

When people who work with pigs are protected against influenza, they're less likely to share their human influenza with a pig, and they're less likely to pick up a pig influenza from a pig. So we recommend vaccinations for humans. And if it's a disease problem in the pigs. We recommend influenza vaccinations for pigs. We also do things like there is a voluntary surveillance program for influenza that's been in place in the United States since 2008, where we have a supported system to detect influenza in the pigs, and then, if it's detected, we can figure out what kind of virus it is, and then that virus could be used to make a vaccine specific for that farm.

And that's called the USDA voluntary swine, influenza, virus surveillance program. We've had that with our pigs. And then all the other things we do for biosecurity, for swine farm work like shower in shower out filtered barns. Bio secure loading and load out. Vet to vet calls. This is what my pigs have, and then the routine testing so lots of different things.

But what we're we're concerned about beyond the pigs is, we're concerned that if a new virus, like the H5 viruses that are in pigs and in poultry, or sorry the H5 viruses that are in cattle and in poultry right now, if those were to get into pigs, we're concerned that a pig would take that virus and reassort it with one of its regular swine influenza viruses, and then move around a new virus out into our shared what we call ecosystem, our shared world that we share with humans and pigs and turkeys and all sorts of livestock. So yeah, good questions.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Yeah, thank you for explaining all of that. You got a couple different points there that I wanted to address. So that was really good. So let's get back to this H5 virus that we currently have and has been around since like 2021 or so, why is it still around?

Marie R Culhane:
Well. This particular virus is really well adapted to wild birds and all sorts of wild birds, not just your typical ducks and geese.

But other birds as well. We're seeing songbirds for the 1st time. Get infected with this virus. We're seeing a lot of raptors get infected with this virus. Those are the birds of prey, like hawks and eagles and vultures and things like that. We're seeing those birds get infected with it, and it's just spread in the wild bird population all around the world. So it's very common in the wild bird population.

And because the virus is all around us. It's hard to stop it from coming into our farms. And because we live especially in Minnesota, right where the land of lakes. And so there are a lot of birds that come through our state. And so it's sticking around because there are so many natural hosts of this virus now that are out there, and it's not killing every duck or goose out there, or Songbird, for that matter. It's not killing them. They're able to just live with the virus and shed it in their feces. And it's when we drag that feces or secretions from those naturally infected wild birds into our farms that then our farmed animals get sick.

So that's why it's been sticking around. Because the virus is in a lot of wild bird species. It's all over the world, and it's not killing those wild bird species, but those wild bird species can still bring it onto our farms.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Yeah, thank you for explaining those briefly. So, how is the virus in some of these different cases been spread on the dairy farms?

Marie R Culhane:
Yeah. So there's been some good work done on the East coast at Cornell and at Michigan, in Michigan. And there is some recent information that's going to come out this week from California. I guess there's a webinar this week. So if you want to learn about California, you'll find out about that webinar but how is it moving?

Well, let's 1st talk about how it got onto these cattle farms right? So it's again at some point at the end of 2023, or the very beginning of 2024, some wild birds came in contact with cattle, because there was either water or feed for the wild birds to rest, and they shed the virus in their wild bird droppings to the cattle, and the cattle ingested those, or snorted those, or whatever, and got infected.

And then, because the way we raise our cattle now in the United States, we like the cows to calve in the Southern United States, so they'll freshen down South Texas, Oklahoma, where it's really easy to raise a calf.

But then, after she freshens and she's ready. We move that lactating cow back up north where it's cooler, where she can milk. And so we've kind of done multi-site production in a sense, for cattle, which is something we're really familiar with with pigs. Right? We have our sow farms in North Carolina and our grow finishers up in Iowa and Minnesota. Well, they're doing that for cattle as well.

And I think every pig producer can understand the advantages of being specific to a site of production. So the way it's moving around is with cattle and then with trucks and people that handle those cattle and aren't cleaned and disinfected, and from people moving from farm to farm, because we never said in particular, we never said that people that work with chickens couldn't work with cattle. We've never said that before. This was new. So there's some spread there between the species.

And then the other interesting thing. So people equipment cattle. The other different thing is in a local area. The commonly seen farm animal species can move it around so cats, raccoons, foxes, you know things that you might see on the farm that you're like, oh, there's a fox. They can get infected and move it around. And we call that local area spread because a raccoon isn't going to go for miles and miles and miles. He's going to stick within an area same with a fox and same with a cat.

So those are the main ways that it's moving within cattle. The number one way to spread disease, regardless of the species, is moving the infected animal. That's the number one way, and then anything contaminated by that infected animal is the other way, including our clothing, our boots, and our equipment, and our vehicles.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Which shouldn't really come as a surprise for those of us working with pigs. Because we know from the different viruses that we deal with. Yeah, research has been done to show the different ways that those viruses will spread from farm to farm.

Marie R Culhane:
Yup exactly. It should make sense to us. Which is why I'm actually hopeful that we'll be able to keep this virus H5 viruses out of the swine industry. Because we're aware of these ways. You know we have. We wash and disinfect after we load out, if we load out pigs. We shower in again. You know some people. We don't let the truck driver come into the farm and things like that. So we try to create those breaks when our we're introducing pigs or moving pigs out of our farms.Those are all good points.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
So I know there have been reports of infected workers on both poultry and dairy farms over the past year. Can you share what signs did these infected individuals have, and how might they have contracted the virus?

Marie R Culhane:
Yeah. So let's start with dairy workers. First, there are billions with a b virus particles in the milk coming out of that cow, and that's the number one thing that cow is producing. And when you're in a parlor working these cows, your face is at utter height, and so there's milk in the there's virus in the milk, and then you're getting some milk on you. Some, you know, in your mouth. If you're not covering your mouth and your eyes up your nose. You know. Maybe as you're spraying out some things like that.

So from the milk into the eyes, nose, or mouth of the human. And that's because we work so closely with our dairy cows, you know, when we're milking them, and things like that. The other way is, if you know you are really good about getting it out of your eyes, nose, nose, and mouth, you know, if you didn't wash your hands, you know, and you wiped your face.

Or you started eating or took a drink, because it's hot in those parlors in the summer. Things like that. How people get infected when they're working with poultry. It's usually during the depopulation that the humane killing process, the humane killing of the whole farm is called humane. Killing of groups of animals is called depopulation.

So when they're depopulating birds because they're infected, that's a time that the poultry workers are getting infected. They have to catch the birds, kill the birds, move the dead birds out, and that dander and feathers, and maybe blood. If it was a blood process of killing, all that stuff is the way that the poultry people are getting infected. There's some people that have gotten sick, and then we don't know their exact exposure.

We suspect that there might be some exposure to raw milk, or to carcasses of dead birds that they handled themselves.

But those would be the other ways and I think your other question was, How what does it look like?

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Yeah, what are some of the signs that infected people might have?

Marie R Culhane:
Yeah. So thank goodness, the majority of the people that have clinical signs, it's really mild. We had last time I looked there were 70 human cases. Let's just see what the current situation is. So you can just do h, 5, bird flu current situation and click on that. And it usually pops right up as to how many have? Yep, 70 cases in the US.

One death in that one person that died was from Missouri, and they had other conditions. That made them really at high risk of complications and death, which is a tragedy from this virus. But in the other cases of those 70, 41 people were exposed to dairy cattle. 24 were exposed to poultry farms 3 had. No, they have unknown exposure. They weren't able to figure out how they got exposed, and 2 were exposed to other animals. Maybe their backyard flocks, or some wild birds and the majority of the cases have been in California and in California, of humans and in Colorado. But in both California and Colorado they did a really good job of working with everybody on those farms to follow them, and that's something we do in Minnesota is, if there's an infected Poultry farm or dairy farm in Minnesota, our State Department of Health of Human Health works really closely, to offer them support, to give them face masks and gloves and goggles, and to say, Hey, how are you feeling this week? Do you want to get tested? Here's some preventative medicine. Here's some things that you could use to do that. So that's why there's a lot of dose detections in those cases, because those states are actively looking for them.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
I think that leads me into my next question. How do they know that these people were infected by animals?

Marie R Culhane:
Yeah. So they had history of exposure. So let's just stick with dairy for right now. So people that worked in the milking parlor were milking sick cows, and those people came up with clinical signs like red eyes. So we make some people call it Pink Eye, but its scientific name is conjunctivitis, or the medical name. So red eyes, conjunctivitis.

Some people that's been the majority of the cases. Some people also got respiratory systems. So sneezing, coughing, runny nose.

Things like that. And then what they do is they say, oh, well, we can test your. We can swab your eye, we can swab your nose, and we can see that the influenza virus, by looking at the genetic sequence, what that virus is made of.

They look up the makeup that virus. And if the makeup of that virus from that human is the same as the makeup of the virus in the dairy cow, then they know that it's the same. So you have to have a history of exposure. Yes, I was on this farm. Yes, I worked with these cows, and then the virus is exactly the same, and that's how they know it.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
So how should humans protect themselves from contracting H5 Influenza, whether it be dairy, cattle, poultry, or other livestock that they might be working with?

Marie R Culhane:
Yeah. You want to keep the virus out of your nose and mouth and out of your eyes.

So there's a few ways to do that one. You can wear a mask, and it doesn't have to be a super. N. 95, you know, scientifically approved mask. Some research done by the University of Minnesota has shown that even the simple paper masks or bandanas are really good at not really good, but they're good enough to keep it from catching that droplet and keeping it from going deep into your nose or your mouth.

So we always say, you know, protect the mucosa. Well, what do I mean by that? Protect your eyes, nose, and mouth. The other thing is, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands, and that's pretty much good for any disease on earth. Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands and or wear gloves.

Again, research at the University of Minnesota has shown that even hand sanitizer is good for getting rid of influenza off your hands so you could use hand sanitizer. You know I'm done working with the animals. I'm going to sanitize my hands. I'm going to go have a nice cold drink to cool down, or I'm done working with these cows. Now I'm going to sanitize my hands, change boots and coveralls and go work with these cows and things like that. And so just

That would be the 2 things, and then you can have farm specific clothing. I'm going into the farm. I'm going to put on farm specific boots and farm specific coveralls to work with those animals, and then, before I leave and go, you know, get in the car to go home or go into town and have lunch. I'm going to take off those barn clothes and wear my street clothes or my town clothes to town. So those are the ways to protect yourself from getting sick from animals or spreading the disease around.

And of course, with pig farms, we have shower in shower out, and they're doing a lot more shower and shower out on poultry farms, not so much on the dairy farms, yet..

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Good points.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
What should people do with dead birds that they suspect died from Evian influenza?

Marie R Culhane:
Yeah, in every State there should be a hotline. That they can call and report dead birds in Minnesota. It's our

Marie R Culhane:
It's the DNR. Actually, if you see 5 or more dead birds, we'd really like you to call the state DNR. And report those dead birds, and there is all over our State in Minnesota. There are places there we go report sick or dead. Wild birds. You can call the 800 number 886-646-6367.

To report sick or dead birds in groups of 5 or more to the Dnr. We're saying 5 or more, because there are such things as hit by cars and window crashes and things like that. That'll happen to individual birds. But you know they die in groups from influenza. So 5 or more birds call that Dnr number 886-646-6367. If you know your regional Dnr number. You can call them as well.

And then, if you have if you have your own poultry, I know lots of people, especially this time of year. They'll have chicks in their backyard, or they'll have their own laying hens. You can call the the State. You can report it by email, or you can call the state number which is (320) 231-5170. That's to report sick or dead. Poultry like I went outside, and everybody's sick.

And there's also an avian influenza hotline which is 1- 833-454-0156, and those are all available on our Minnesota Board of Animal Health website, those hotlines. But those are good numbers to have handy. I keep the Dnr number in my phone just for anything, you know. Like, what if I saw a bear where a bear isn't supposed to be, and things like that? Or what if I saw some poaching going on? I have that number handy just to protect our wildlife, because I think that's all of our responsibility.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Yeah, those are good numbers to have on hand like you mentioned. And for those listening to the podcast I'll put them in the show notes as well, so you can get them that way as well.

So to wrap up our discussion here, Marie, are there any closing remarks that you would like to make.

Marie R Culhane:
Well, I just want everybody to know that influenza isn't just a dairy cow problem. It's just not a chicken problem. It's not an egg price problem. It's it's all of our problems. This virus is shared between humans and birds and mammals and mammals. The people that are listening to this podcast are interested in a very important mammal. To me, pigs and people need to know that pigs are highly susceptible. They are at risk for influenza viruses of any type. And so, being aware, working closely with your veterinarian and testing because we have a lot of tests, and we have a lot of solutions for pigs are really important. So don't just say, Oh, it's just the flu. Let's do something about it. So we don't create bigger problems.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Great reminder. Well, thank you, Marie, for taking your time and sharing your expertise with H5. Influenza, as it relates to poultry, dairy, and other food animals.

Marie R Culhane:
You're welcome. Have a great day and thanks again for the opportunity to share with all your listeners.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Yeah, good to have you. And I want to thank our listeners for tuning in to our University of Minnesota, Swine and U podcast again. I'm Sarah Schieck Boelke, Swine Extension Educator. Along with Dr. Marie Culhane, Professor with our College of Veterinary Medicine's Department of Veterinary Population Medicine.

To further connect with our University of Minnesota Extension Swine. Please visit our swine specific pages on the University of Minnesota Extension's website that can be found at www.extension.umn.edu/swine, and on those pages you will find connections to our blog as well as some other resources to learn about research being done by our swine faculty in veterinary medicine. Please visit their swine in Minnesota blog at www.umnswinenews.com.