Lab workers at the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory at the University of California, Davis, are threatening to strike, which could throw a wrench in the ability to test for avian flu in poultry and cattle.
The UC Davis technicians are unionized under the University Professional & Technical Employees union, a 20,000-member organization across the University of California system. UPTE members have threatened a systemwide strike since a UC San Francisco picket in November failed to meet the group’s requests.
CAHFS union members held an informational picket line on Dec.11, 2024, to publicly lament some of what they’re saying has created a toxic work environment.
Amy Fletcher, a UC Davis food science researcher and the UPTE UC Davis Chapter co-chair and union-wide UPTE treasurer, said these issues persisted within the CAHFS team even before the BioTech team — the lab responsible for testing avian flu in poultry and dairy — brought forth their concerns.
Back in April 2023, a former Equine Analytical Chemistry Lab staff member asked CAHFS to address gaps in training, retention and pay equity. The BioTech team raised similar concerns a month later.
Over the last 18 months, Fletcher has worked with CAHFS staff to urge the UC to properly staff their team, create cross-training and retention strategies and receive higher pay based on the specialty of their work — all requests that have gotten more urgent as the avian flu outbreak drags on.
CAHFS houses multiple labs, including BioTech — one of the main statewide facilities testing poultry and dairy samples for H5N1.
As a Biosafety Level-3 lab, staff in the BioTech have a multi-month screening process just to begin working onsite, according to Fletcher. That means any staff turnover results in a long process to return to full productivity, even if they get replaced quickly. And that’s on top of institutional knowledge losses, as many of the original staff working with avian flu samples have since left due to the unresolved issues.
Lab technician Victoria Ontiveros wrote in a statement that there’s an even higher risk of human error with the increased workload, warning it “could be catastrophic for consumers and producers alike.”
A UC Davis spokesperson wrote to Agri-Pulse that since the first dairy H5N1 detections in August 2024, the Davis lab has tested anywhere between 400 to 2,000 cow and poultry samples per week.
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Since May 2023, Fletcher said the BioTech lab has been largely ignored in trying to get the UC Davis College of Veterinary Medicine dean’s office to conduct an equity review to get cross trained on tasks, create a plan for recruitment and fill missing positions. Though meetings in April and May 2024 between UC Davis Employee Labor and Relations, CAHFS leadership and the BioTech team occurred, the group never saw any changes and all follow ups were reportedly left unanswered.
A release from the UC Davis veterinary medicine school in December acknowledged that unionized staff are pursuing contract negotiations with the UC and assured that “at no point has animal health or public safety been compromised.”
“During this intensive response effort, CAHFS is committed to actively listening to staff concerns,” read the release. “We thank our staff for their incredible dedication to protecting public health and are grateful for the efforts of our partners.”
The UC Davis spokesperson also clarified that the CAHFS lab is utilizing services from the National Animal Health Laboratory Network – a U.S. Department of Agriculture service of nationwide animal disease diagnostic labs – and that CAHFS has since added staff since three lab members left in May and June of 2024.
In a UPTE press release shared with Agri-Pulse, CAHFS lab diagnostician Alyssa Laxamata described getting injured due to the volume of tests needing processing, despite having repeatedly informed the UC that their work-life was not sustainable.
"Meanwhile, consumers and agricultural producers are feeling the impacts of this outbreak…It's time for UC to take its responsibility seriously and ensure our critical public institutions are properly staffed to keep us safe," Laxamana wrote.
According to Fletcher, a full staff should be a total of seven people — if not more to meet producer demand during this avian flu outbreak — in the BioTech lab: one lab assistant, one supervisor and the rest are multi-level staff research associates (SRAs). With only two SRAs still in-office, Fletcher said that leaves them on call almost every weekend, and testing is falling far behind.
“The turnaround time is supposed to be 24 hours and it's been taking at times up to a week,” said Fletcher.
In her statement, Laxamana added that the quality control checks that are supposed to happen for each test result often are not happening since current management is ill-trained. She added that the SRAs are often correcting the section head on lab policies and testing procedures, often catching test results that haven’t been properly verified.
“A missed positive could result in preventable infection, and a false positive could result in the unnecessary culling and death of thousands of animals,” she wrote, though the UC Davis spokesperson said all non-negative samples are also sent to the national reference lab for secondary confirmation before any animals can be culled.
UPTE members have until Thursday to cast a vote to determine whether a strike will occur, and the final count could be announced as early as Friday.
Update: This story was updated to include statements from a UC Davis spokesperson.
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