Vermont agriculture officials told the House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, & Forestry on the record that they have a USDA-approved, farm-level testing program to detect the bovine strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and that initial results from a limited number of Vermont dairy farms have been negative.

The testing plan, developed jointly with processors and cooperative buyers, was approved by USDA under a cooperative agreement that will allow the state to take monthly samples on farms rather than sampling only at processing facilities. Eby Florie, director of food safety and consumer protection at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, said, "we were able to get our plan approved, by USDA." She said the agency began farm sampling at the start of the year and has onboarded temporary staff for the effort.

Why it matters: Vermont exports more than 80% of its milk, agency officials told lawmakers, and federal testing at pooled processing sites could require states to quickly trace any positive result back to implicated farms. Agency leaders said the farm-level approach speeds that tracing and gives state veterinarians the ability to move quickly if a positive is found.

Agency officials explained how the testing program works and why it targets lactating dairy cows. Dr. Kate Levine, assistant state veterinarian, told the committee that the federal order issued in 2024 requires testing for lactating dairy cattle before interstate movement because "milk is really the commodity that, seems to be most responsible, for the spread," and because the PCR test can detect virus in milk "up to 2 weeks before cattle show any kind of symptoms." Levine added that cattle can be infectious before showing symptoms: "They're actively shedding virus at that time."

Samples taken in Vermont are being shipped overnight to Cornell University for initial PCR testing; any nonnegative result is forwarded to the USDA National Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, for confirmation. Florie said the state does not run the required tests in-state and that the worst-case expectation communicated to farms is that a final confirmed result could take up to two weeks.

The agency described steps to minimize disruption to farm operations. Florie said USDA provided funds that allowed the agency to hire five temporary employees and to recruit retired inspectors and other staff with dairy experience. Those samplers received training at the University of Vermont creamery and are being assigned consistently to the same farms each month to reduce the number of unfamiliar people on a farm. For direct-load farms, agency staff will collect an aseptic sample from the milk house without handling official load seals.

Agency officials said they are sampling milk that enters Grade A interstate commerce and are not mandating sampling of small suppliers who sell raw milk only direct to consumers; however, officials said a few voluntary raw-milk sellers have asked to be tested and the agency will sample volunteers at no cost. Florie explained the reasoning: "The USDA requirement is for milk, Grade A interstate commerce. And so for our cooperative agreement, that's how we wrote ours as well."

Officials described coordination with industry and public-health agencies. Florie said the agency has hosted weekly calls with processors, co-ops and independent buyers to design the plan and to provide updates. Nicole Dubuque, chief operating officer of the agency, said she would be "mostly in the background" unless the committee had broader agency questions. Committee members were told the Vermont Health Department is the lead on human-health decisions and vaccine questions for people.

On disease incidence, Levine told lawmakers that since March 2024 the national count included 924 confirmed cases across 16 states, with recent concentration in California; she said Vermont and the New England region have not had the bovine strain detected in lactating herds. Levine added that cattle generally recover and herds can return to production though some cows may not fully regain prior production.

Committee members pressed officials on a series of operational points: turnaround time for test confirmation (up to two weeks worst case), whether samplers are using milkers or industry staff (the state is using trained agency samplers because processors had limited capacity), and whether the state is testing goat or sheep dairies (isolated cases in other species have occurred elsewhere, but Vermont has not seen those in local small ruminant dairies). Florie said initial Vermont farm-level tests have been negative but were from a small sample size while the program ramps up.

Officials also reported four instances since 2022 of HPAI detections in domestic poultry in Vermont; those cases were in small-scale backyard flocks and were not connected to the bovine strain driving concern on the dairy side. The first such domestic-bird detections occurred in spring 2022 and subsequent detections came in late 2022, 2023 and 2024; Levine said sequencing showed those bird cases were related to wild-bird strains and not the cattle-associated strain.

What the agency told lawmakers it will do next: continue monthly farm sampling, maintain weekly industry briefings, manage data and biosecurity protocols, and coordinate with USDA, Cornell and the state health department. Agency officials emphasized they were not asking the legislature for new authority or emergency action at this time.

"As a state, we were concerned with if our milk is mixed in with, you know, 10 or 12 other states at a at another plant and there is a hit in that milk silo or whatever storage vessel the milk is in," Florie told the committee, summarizing why Vermont sought a farm-level approach. Levine added that federal movement-testing requirements focus on lactating dairy cattle because milk has been the most consistent high-shedding source.

The committee signaled appreciation for the update and did not take formal action during the hearing. Agency staff said they would return with additional briefings as the sampling program expands and as federal guidance evolves.