Not far from the shores of Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin, lies the office of Keith Poulsen, DVM, PhD, DACVIM, one the state’s most important avian flu sentinels.
Poulsen is the director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, one of 58 animal disease testing labs, which have been at the forefront of supporting the nation’s fight against infectious diseases in poultry and dairy farms.
As director of the Wisconsin lab, Poulsen relies on research from the World Health Organization to inform his work. We spoke with Poulsen about his role protecting Wisconsin’s farms and his interactions with WHO.
Poulsen’s answers have been edited for clarity.
How has the World Health Organization been beneficial in your work in Wisconsin?
Poulsen: As a veterinarian, we have a term called ‘One Health’, which is recognizing that human health, animal health and environmental health are all really closely related. When we think about WHO, much of what we do on a daily basis — whether its diagnostic tests for zoonotic [animal] diseases or foreign animal diseases like highly pathogenic avian flu and foot and mouth disease — those test results are all moving back and forth between different professional health agencies, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to WHO to the World Organization for Animal Health, to understand what is spreading and where. Nothing happens in a vacuum because we are all connected. And we are all sharing information so we can recognize where we need to put our resources and where we don’t, in terms of surveillance and biosafety.
“Nothing happens in a vacuum because we are all connected.”
Can you talk more about why continuing global sharing of avian flu data supports American’s health?
Poulsen: We have been monitoring avian flu globally with WHO for decades. That is how we knew about these recent concerning changes in the avian flu virus. This virus spreads through wild migratory waterfowl. We cannot control these birds from entering Wisconsin or U.S. borders. The birds congregate north and south, and depending on the season, they come back through continents and intermingle. That is how this virus is adapting to our domestic and food producing species and adapting to infect people, as we have seen with the D.1.1 strains in people working with cows.
Understanding that this is happening in people is important because it is an early warning system, a precursor of what is going to happen to people who aren’t infected — again, so we know where to allocate our resources to prevent further spread.
What are you doing with that information to help Wisconsin farmers right now?
Poulsen: My lab is part of the national surveillance of poultry and dairy farms and the national milk supply. Wisconsin’s dairy farms and milk supply have not been affected yet based on our work and that of our collaborators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We have been working with other states, USDA and WOAH to educate the state’s 5,400 dairy farm owners on what to watch out for and biosecurity to support this annual $55 billion state industry. Everything we do is tightly linked within our state to dairy and agriculture. That information is critical.
“We have been working with other states, USDA and WOAH to educate the state’s 5,400 dairy farm owners on what to watch out for and biosecurity to support this annual $55 billion state industry.”
Can you talk more about how surveillance has enabled you to know where to put resources in Wisconsin?
Poulsen: Avian flu surveillance and knowing what is currently circulating is critical. To do that, we have to be getting up-to-date data from other states and countries to understand the risks for food production and to Wisconsin’s agricultural economy. Wisconsin no longer has infected poultry. We just finished the cleaning and sanitation quality control samples to repopulate the affected farms, and we can direct our resources toward surveillance and supporting dairy farmers. So far, we haven’t seen it in our dairy farms, but we don’t want to wait until cows are sick. If we do, it will be a lot harder and much more expensive to control.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently conditionally approved a vaccine for poultry to try to stop the avian flu spread in the U.S. Will this strategy work if the U.S. is no longer sharing data and information with the WHO?
Poulsen: Vaccinating poultry is complicated because there are trade implications. There have also been technical difficulties and failed attempts globally to vaccinate domestic poultry against H5N1 avian flu that we need to learn from. Given that H5N1 develops from wild birds, the use of vaccine, surveillance and diagnostic testing with organizations like WHO and WOAH become even more important so that we know what flu strains might be coming our way, and we can tailor development to match the predominant strains, just like we do with human vaccines. We must keep sharing both WHO and WOAH animal and health information with one another, because most new human infectious disease originates in animals and as I said before, animal and human health are linked together.