"The Bird-Flu Tipping Point" highlights need for Canada to prepare for H5N1

From the 2025-03-20 Radio Atlantic podcast episode “The Bird-Flu Tipping Point”:

“There was a moment last year when bird flu was detected in a small number of cattle herds and could have been contained more easily, but the U.S. government basically missed that moment.”

Canada has a very short window of opportunity to seize this moment for our nation. H5N1 (bird) flu transmission in cattle is not yet present in Canada, but its arrival here is inevitable.

In 2013, during recovery from the Canadian BSE crises, Canada identified deficiencies in our livestock animal identification and traceability system that compromise our capacity to investigate livestock health incidents that impact human health. The regulation amendment required to resolve these deficiencies was finalized in 2023, but never implemented.

From the American Veterinary Medical Association article “Avian influenza virus type A (H5N1) in U.S. dairy cattle”:

The spread of H5N1 within and among herds indicates that bovine-to-bovine spread occurs. Overall, animal movement is a recognized risk for disease transmission.

Canada must urgently resolve these deficiencies to prepare for the inevitable arrival in Canada of H5N1 flu in cattle.

Flokk proposes an innovative, collaborative standards, approach to securing, and sustaining, effective Canadian livestock traceability in our discussion paper “Time to pull this calf ourselves: Canada’s livestock industry must find our own path to traceability”.

But Canada may have run out of time to pursue an innovative solution. At minimum, Minister of Health Kamal Khera needs to be encouraged to approve the proposed changes to Part XV of the Health of Animals Regulations (Identification and Traceability).