Idaho officials say high‑path avian influenza reached dairy cattle; state focusing on milk testing and targeted quarantines

Chanel Tewalt, director of the Idaho State Department of Agriculture, and Dr. Scott Lively, administrator of the Division of Animal Industries and state veterinarian, told the House Agricultural Affairs Committee that Idaho has shifted to a policy of targeted quarantines and milk testing after identifying HPAI in dairy cattle.

Tewalt said the department “very, quietly turned off basically the movement system” early in the outbreak to limit possible imports from affected states and to buy time to understand the disease's behavior. She told lawmakers the state emphasized farm‑level responses and “tried to have quarantines and restrictions that made sense to industry, that allowed them to move culls, that allowed them to move milk, that kept businesses moving while at the same time trying to help us get our arms around disease mitigation.”

Dr. Lively said the state has focused restrictions on lactating animals because the virus has been reliably detected in milk. “We know that the disease is primarily existing in the milk,” he said, and added that movement restrictions have been limited to lactating…