USDA will allow field trials to test vaccines to prevent avian flu from infecting dairy cows, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Wednesday at the Farm Progress show in Boone, Iowa.
Vilsack offered few details about the field safety trials but said "sufficient information" had been presented to USDA to allow him to authorize them.
In a notice posted Wednesday evening, USDA's Center for Veterinary Biologics said it's now accepting submissions "for field studies to support conditional or full licensure of nonviable, non-replicating vaccines."
Before today's notice, CVB had said that all studies, "even those not involving virus challenge, were to be conducted in containment facilities regardless of risk profile."
The agency also said it would consider granting conditional licenses for vaccines for lactating dairy cattle "with either separate or combined field efficacy and field safety study data from those target animals."
Dairy industry groups and companies involved in vaccine manufacturing had been pushing USDA to speed up the process for approval, citing the spread in the virus among daily cattle since the virus first appeared in Texas earlier this year and then spread to other states and herds within those states, in large part through transportation of dairy cows.
In an Aug, 16 letter, groups representing the dairy, turkey, and egg industries wrote to Vilsack with “an urgent request” that USDA and other federal agencies support development of vaccinations for dairy cows, turkeys and egg-laying hens “to help mitigate the circulation” of the virus in dairy herds “and reduce the risk of spill-over of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) into commercial turkey flocks and egg layer operations.”
The virus has been detected in 193 herds in 13 states since March, but its spread has slowed some in August, according to statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. APHIS reports only one herd infected in the past couple of weeks, in Michigan.
In his talk, Vilsack also announced grants totaling $35 million for seven projects in seven states through the department’s Fertilizer Production Expansion Program (FPEP), which is funded by the Commodity Credit Corporation.
The biggest grant, worth $11.77 million, is going to AdvanSix, an ammonium sulfate producer in Virginia, to expand its production. Currently, the company serves about 31,400 producers; the grant will enable it to provide fertilizer to more than 36,000.
A $9 million grant will go toward two pelletizing facilities in Tennessee. “Nyrstar, a zinc mining operation, will construct pelletizing plants to produce an agricultural lime additive, which neutralizes soil pH and adds calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc to support crop and plant growth,” USDA said in its summary of the grant recipients.
Other grants will go to companies in Wisconsin, California, Iowa, New York and Oregon.
Vilsack said that so far the program has allocated $286.6 million for 64 projects in 32 states.
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This story was updated Aug. 28 with additional information from the Center for Veterinary Biologics.
