Nebraska's emphasis on intensive animal ag complicates bird flu fight
The Nebraska Department of Agriculture is asking farmers and others to keep an eye on their flocks as avian influenza spreads. (Stock photo by)
As a nursing instructor in Lincoln and Omaha, I have been following closely our country's bird flu crisis, and was saddened but not surprised to learn that our country experienced the death of its first patient from H5N1 bird flu in Louisiana.
A new case of bird flu virus was just detected in a backyard flock in Saunders County, adjacent to Sarpy County where I live. To help protect workers from the virus, a bill has just been introduced in Lincoln, which is a helpful preventive step.
This is particularly important right now as a new strain of the virus, H5N9, has been detected in California, which means that bird flu is transforming in a way that could allow it to spread more easily in humans.
My colleagues and I are watchful for symptoms of bird flu as our state has the sad distinction of being among the top five states in the Midwest with the highest number of birds affected by bird flu virus. Hopefully our vigilance will help ensure that Nebraska does not join the list of states in which more than 65 human cases of bird flu have been detected.
Tragically, this virus has sickened dozens of people, decimated poultry populations, and infected dairy cows.
Thankfully, our state is doing a good job of monitoring for the virus. But now is the time to look closely at the food production system that puts farm workers in close contact with sick birds and cows, the standard American diet that demands it and the health ramifications of both.
From a health professional's perspective, shifting food production away from intensive animal agriculture can benefit public health. Facilities with large numbers of animals in a small amount of space are a concern for public health because they provide ideal conditions for viruses to spread, evolve, and possibly acquire the ability to infect people more easily.
Intensive animal agriculture was implicated when influenza viruses H1N1, H5N1, and N7N9 jumped from animals to people, according to research published in Frontiers in Microbiology.
Nebraska is among the top 16 egg-producing states. The life of egg farmers and contract chicken growers can be challenging, and some of them are repurposing their chicken houses to grow crops.
North Carolina poultry farmers Dale and Paula Boles switched from chickens, converted their 500-foot-long poultry barn to a greenhouse and now grow organic vegetables.
They are not alone. In Southwest Arkansas, farmers Jennifer and Rodney Barrett are transitioning from raising poultry and cattle to growing mushrooms.
These farm transitions aren't easy. The government should provide financial and technical support. Nebraska could help its farmers with a program like the one established by lawmakers in Vermont who provide grants to farmers who wish to diversify or transition from one type of farming to another.
On a broader scale, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., has introduced legislation that would require the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to provide grants to livestock farmers to pay off related debt and transition the property to alternative agriculture activities. If legislation like this is introduced again this year, U.S. Sens. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., should support it.
With its vast prairies and farmland, Nebraska is full of opportunity for egg and poultry farmers who want to transition to crops or orchards. Plant-based foods grown here can help people improve heart health, prevent diabetes and maintain a healthy weight, among other benefits.
In fact, Nebraska is already a top producer of dry edible beans, which are high in protein as well as micronutrients like potassium, magnesium, folate, iron and zinc. Though we are the Cornhuskers, leafy greens, tomatoes, asparagus, raspberries, and carrots, to name just a few, also provide farmers with opportunities for income.
Shifting away from animal agriculture helps our environment and improves worker safety as well. Large-scale poultry operations produce huge amounts of waste and contribute to waterways overloaded with phosphorous and other pollutants. Poultry farms are a primary source of water, air, and land pollution.
I have found for myself and my patients that removing animal products from the diet significantly improves health, and the scientific literature tells the same story. A recent study with 22 pairs of identical twins found that a plant-based diet improves heart health in as little as eight weeks. The twins following a plant-based diet experienced lower LDL, or 'bad' cholesterol, and they lost more weight than the omnivore twins.
Government grants and other assistance should be available if Nebraska poultry farmers or egg producers would like to switch to growing crops, which also would benefit human health and the environment.
Cody Stubbe, RN, MSN, is a nursing instructor in Nebraska. She teaches healthy nutrition and is a member of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a public health advocacy nonprofit.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Politico
2 hours ago
- Politico
There's one vice RFK Jr. isn't talking about
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made it his mission to remind Americans that they need to get off the couch and lay off the junk food. But there's one vice he's not talking about: smoking. That's troubled anti-smoking activists, researchers who focus on the diseases tobacco causes and Democrats in Congress who point out that smoking, despite a marked decline in recent years, still leads to more preventable deaths than anything else. Even so, Kennedy didn't mention the health impacts of smoking once in last month's Make America Healthy Again report assessing the biggest threats to Americans' health. That marks a turning point from the priorities of public health officials going back decades, including the Biden administration's, which targeted smoking as part of a moonshot plan to halve cancer death rates. Anti-tobacco advocates fear deemphasizing the dangers of tobacco could slow or even halt progress in driving down smoking rates. 'Attempting to combat chronic disease without tobacco control is like attempting a triathlon without a bicycle,' said Brian King, whom Kennedy pushed out of his job as the Food and Drug Administration's top tobacco regulator in April. 'You're destined for failure before leaving the starting line.' Since President Donald Trump's inauguration, his health agencies appear to have shelved two moves King planned to combat smoking, banning the last remaining legal cigarette flavoring, menthol, and requiring companies to reduce the amount of nicotine in their products. Nicotine is what makes cigarettes addictive. But an HHS spokesperson said the department 'remains steadfast in its mission to protect and promote public health,' adding that the MAHA report is not an 'exhaustive inventory of every HHS program or public health challenge.' 'HHS agencies continue to carry out their responsibilities, including work on tobacco control, with the highest level of integrity and commitment to the American public,' the spokesperson said. A sustained public health campaign to educate Americans about smoking's risks over decades has driven a huge decrease in use. In the 1960s, more than 4 in 10 adults smoked cigarettes. Now it's fewer than 1 in 8. And the public health success among kids is even starker. Fewer than 1 in 26 now smoke cigarettes, according to an analysis of federal data. The negative health impacts of tobacco use are well-studied and vast. For years it has been the top preventable cause of death in the United States, contributing to cancer, heart disease and stroke. But when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) quizzed Kennedy about that during a budget hearing last month, asking him to name the 'No. 1 cause of preventable death in America today,' Kennedy was stumped. 'I'm not sure what you're talking about,' he said. Kennedy's apparent lack of interest in combating smoking — the word 'tobacco' appears in the MAHA report only within the context of his concerns about food marketing while 'smoking' and 'cigarettes' are never mentioned — also suggests this Trump administration won't be like the first. Then, Trump's FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, put the menthol ban and the limits on nicotine on the table, drawing applause from anti-smoking activists. Congress permitted the agency to make those moves in a 2009 law. That law banned flavorings except menthol — which is a cash cow for Marlboro cigarette maker Philip Morris, whose support helped get the law passed — but gave the FDA the power to decide whether to ban it. It also gave the agency the power to force cigarette companies to reduce nicotine levels. The Obama administration didn't do so. President Joe Biden proposed limiting nicotine levels after the 2024 election but never finalized the rule. A Biden plan to ban menthol cigarettes in 2022 was also not finalized. Menthol is popular among Black smokers and some Democrats feared a ban could alienate crucial voters in a presidential election year. Jerome Adams, who was surgeon general during the first Trump term, said he wants Kennedy to prioritize the tobacco regulations laid out in Gottlieb's tobacco regulation plan — an effort he said would benefit youth and marginalized communities that are disproportionately impacted by menthol cigarettes. 'These proposed regulations align with the MAHA movement's focus on preventing chronic diseases,' Adams said. The tobacco industry spent heavily on Trump's 2024 campaign — and already has a lot to show for it. Trump pledged to 'save' vaping on his social media site, Truth Social, in September after meeting with Vapor Technology Association Executive Director Tony Abboud. The Trump administration pushed King — whom the tobacco industry had criticized for years — out of his job leading the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products. Job dismissals led by Trump's Department of Government Efficiency also gutted the CDC Office on Smoking and Health, which oversees federal smoking cessation programs and studies. The Trump administration also slashed funds the National Institutes of Health disburses to research facilities, which scientists say could imperil tobacco smoking studies. Asked about the industry's contributions to the Trump campaign, White House spokesperson Kush Desai wrote in an email, 'the only special interest guiding the Administration's decision-making is the best interest of the American people.' Tobacco-control advocates say Trump's early moves could undermine the country's progress diminishing smoking and the diseases it causes. 'These levels are decreasing because we have made such a commitment over the past few decades to enact things to work to get these levels down,' said Catharine Young, a Biden administration official who worked on his cancer moonshot initiative. 'But if you stop that or if you don't increase that effort, they're not going to continue to go down. They're either going to flat line, or they're going to start rising again.' Both Democratic and Republican administrations have hesitated to use all the regulatory authorities the 2009 law granted them. After Gottlieb resigned in March 2019, the agency's efforts to advance his 2017 tobacco plan were snuffed out. 'With his resignation, we lost the champion for the 2017 plan, and some months after he resigned, I was literally ordered by political appointees at FDA to stop talking publicly about menthol and nicotine,' said Mitch Zeller, who led the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products before King. Ultimately, Zeller wasn't able to implement a menthol ban or nicotine limits during any of the three administrations he served. During Biden's administration, then-FDA Commissioner Robert Califf enlisted allies outside the government to lobby the White House after agency efforts to ban menthol cigarettes were held up at the Office of Management and Budget. But the final rule was not published before Biden left office. 'They caved to political pressure from cigarette companies,' Zeller said. The FDA estimated the plan to limit nicotine levels in cigarettes proposed during the Biden administration would avert 4.3 million deaths and prevent 48 million youth and young adults from starting habitual cigarette smoking by the end of the century if implemented. And banning menthol cigarettes in the U.S. would cut 324,000 to 654,000 smoking-attributable deaths by 2060, according to modeling studies cited in the 2022 proposal. Luis Pinto, a spokesperson for Reynolds American, the maker of Lucky Strike, Camel and Newport cigarettes, said the company has not yet met with Trump's FDA commissioner, Marty Makary. Pinto said the company is opposed to a menthol cigarette ban because it believes there are 'more effective and sustainable ways to help adult smokers transition away from combustible cigarettes.' 'Rather than setting a nicotine standard, the focus should be on expanding access to a diverse and innovative portfolio of potentially reduced-risk products,' Pinto said. 'Tobacco harm reduction, not prohibition, is the most effective path forward in reducing the health impacts of smoking.' On Capitol Hill, Kennedy has rarely discussed tobacco despite his focus on preventing chronic disease, disappointing lawmakers like Durbin, the second ranking Democrat in the Senate. In an interview with POLITICO, Durbin emphasized the tobacco industry is still a threat to public health, especially as it markets more novel forms of nicotine exposure like vaping, which has become popular among younger Americans. 'The tobacco companies have not given up. Their basic approach is to addict children to their product, and so now they're using vaping and [other] devices to get … high schoolers in America addicted to forms of nicotine,' Durbin said, referring to Gottlieb as a hero. 'I just don't think you can credibly say you're addressing public health in America and ignore tobacco and vaping.' King, who's now with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an anti-smoking group, is still hoping to convince Trump officials that going after tobacco needs to be part of the MAHA agenda. And he says he sees hope in the FDA's crackdown on illegal e-cigarettes, which he interprets as a sign the government is looking to snuff out unapproved vaping products. 'We have seen the decimation of tobacco control infrastructure,' King said. 'It's important you have the resources and the people.'
The Hill
2 hours ago
- The Hill
Biden's COVID czar hammers RFK Jr. over vaccine panel overhaul
Former White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha, who served under President Biden, criticized the decision by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to fire all 17 experts on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) vaccine panel. Kennedy announced the decision in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal Monday, saying, 'A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.' But in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Jha pushed back against Kennedy's reasoning. 'Look what he said in his op-ed was a series of nonsense about a group of individuals, experts…who shape what vaccines, if any, are going to be available to the American people,' Jha said in the interview. 'So obviously this is very concerning,' he continued. 'We'll have to see who he appoints next. But this is a step in the wrong direction.' Jha said he is concerned about what the move foretells about the secretary's agenda on vaccines. Jha pointed to what he characterized as a lackluster response from the secretary to 'the worst measles outbreak of the last 25 years.' He also expressed concern about Kennedy raising questions about vaccines causing autism, which Jha dismissed and said was 'settled science.' 'Then you put this in the middle of all of that,' Jha said, referring to the vaccine panel sweep, 'and what you have is a pretty clear picture that what Secretary Kennedy is trying to do is make sure that vaccines are not readily available to Americans, not just for kids, for the elderly.' 'He could go pretty far with this move, and I really am worried about where we're headed,' Jha continued. He said he's particularly concerned about the effect Kennedy's move will have on kids and whether they will continue having access to certain vaccines in the future. 'Kids rely on vaccines. I'm worried about whether the next generation of kids are going to have access to polio vaccines and measles vaccines. That's where we're heading. That's what we have to push back against.' Kennedy said in his op-ed that he was removing every member of the panel to give the Trump administration an opportunity to appoint its own members. Kennedy has long accused ACIP members of having conflicts of interest, sparking concern among vaccine advocates that he would seek to install members who are far more skeptical of approving new vaccines. But Jha pushed back against criticism that the panel was all Biden-appointed experts, saying, 'When the Biden administration came in, almost all of the appointees had come from the first Trump administration.' 'That was fine because they were good people,' he said. 'They were experts. Right now, it's the same thing. The people he is firing are experts — like a nurse in Illinois who spent her entire career getting kids vaccinated, cancer doctors from Memorial Sloan Kettering — like these are really good people.' 'And generally, CDC has not worried about when were they appointed. The question is, are they good and are they conflict free.'
Axios
2 hours ago
- Axios
Former, current CDC employees call on RFK Jr. to resign
Current and former employees of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are calling on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign, warning that job cuts and proposed funding reductions will hurt the agency's ability to protect the public from future health outbreaks. Why it matters: The Atlanta-based CDC has long been the unbiased hub Americans turn to for facts about health topics, including sexually transmitted infections, maternal and infant health and respiratory infections. Driving the news: Carrying a large American flag, dozens of current employees at the facility walked out in protest of the cuts and joined people rallying in support of the department. Tuesday's protest attracted more than 100 people who packed the sidewalk along Clifton Road across from the CDC's headquarters. What they're saying: Sarah Boim, a member of Fired But Fighting, a grassroots group of former CDC employees who were terminated this year, told Axios the organization holds rallies each Tuesday in support of people who still work at the agency. "It's really hard to put into words how horrible this experience has been, not just for us, but it's going to really affect everybody in America," she said. Eric Mintz, another former CDC employee, told Axios proposed cuts to the CDC, National Institutes for Health, Food and Drug Administration and Medicaid will take away resources needed to protect people from illnesses. "It's not waste, it's not abuse, it's not fraud," Mintz said. "It's hard-working people with expertise trying to protect the American citizens." Catch up quick: The Health and Human Services Department in March announced about 2,400 positions would be eliminated from the CDC. HHS has said reducing its workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees will cut costs from the agency's nearly $2 trillion budget. On Monday, RFK. Jr. removed all 17 members from the expert panel that makes vaccine policy recommendations to the CDC. He said in a statement the agency is "prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda." Questions are still being raised on who runs the CDC, as there is no public health official or designated point person leading the agency. State of play: Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget also recommends cutting $3.59 billion from the CDC. The budget, which was approved by the U.S. House, is still lingering in the U.S. Senate. Threat level: Anna Yousaf, an infectious diseases doctor at the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, called Kennedy a "domestic health threat" who has dismantled programs ranging from lead poisoning prevention to maternal and infant health monitoring.
