Samantha Siedow

Report for Minnesota

The Minnesota House and Senate have voted to respond to the avian influenza epidemic, but they still have to agree on the scope of the effort.

The House included more than $3 million in funding for bird flu prevention in its budget bill, which passed on a bipartisan vote of 130-3 on April 24. Overall, the bill increases funding for the entire agriculture budget by $17 million. 

Commonly referred to as “bird flu,” avian influenza has decimated poultry farms and spread to dairy cows across the U.S. As of April, there have been 70 confirmed human cases in the U.S., with the first reported death in January of this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Minnesota’s agriculture industry is particularly vulnerable to the disease, with Minnesota being the largest turkey producer in the U.S., responsible for 18% of all turkeys produced domestically, according to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.

The virus was detected in Minnesota for the first time in March, found in a Stearns County dairy herd.

The House version of the agriculture bill includes:

• $225,000 each year over the next two years to aid farmers in installing bird flu prevention methods

• $1,000,000 for research on bird flu and other turkey-related diseases

• Up to $2 million from the agricultural emergency account eligible to be used for testing milk products, biomonitoring agricultural and farm workers, and funding the University of Minnesota to develop rapid testing and exposure risk models

Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul, a co-author of the House bill, said the funding is part of a broader approach that also includes emergency response dollars originally proposed by Gov. Tim Walz. The House divided the governor’s $4 million proposal in two for the Democrats and Republicans each to have control over their half.

The emergency response measures would go into effect under the authority of the commissioner of agriculture if the outbreak worsens. 

Hansen said bipartisan cooperation was key to the bill’s passage. 

“We negotiated and came to agreements by accepting a lot of each other’s proposals,” Hansen said.

The Minnesota Senate passed its own version of the agriculture budget on April 30, which includes related but narrower bird flu provisions.

The Senate’s plan includes:

• $250,000 in one-time funding for a grant program similar to the House’s, giving farmers funding to install preventative systems with a cost-share model

• $1,000,000 for research on bird flu and other turkey-related diseases

Sen. Aric Putnam, DFL-Saint Cloud, the chair of the Senate Agriculture, Veterans, Broadband and Rural Development Committee, said allocating additional funding to stop the spread of the bird flu is particularly important amid uncertainty over spending cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration suspended a research program involving more than 40 laboratories aimed at improving bird flu testing in dairy products due to major staff reductions in early April, Reuters reported.

“It’s really just a tremendous amount of chaos and uncertainty, which is rough,” Putnam said. “When you’re dealing with something as potentially dangerous as bird flu, as dynamic as bird flu, having a federal government you could trust would be really helpful.”

The Senate’s version of the bill spends much less than the House. It calls for no additional funding in the first biennium, compared to the House’s $17 million, which could complicate negotiations. The two chambers will have to reconcile their versions in a conference committee before a final bill is presented to the governor.

The Legislature has to pass a state budget for the next two years by May 19.

Report for Minnesota is a project of the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication to support local news in all areas of the state.