The federal government has paid Californian dairy farms more than $ 230 million to subsidize losses in milk production as a result of bird flu, according to records, an amount that the dairy industry expects to climb higher as more claims are processed for damage.
Since August 2024, the H5N1 bird flu has implemented more than 75% of 1,000 dairy farms from California, pathogenic cattle and leads to steep drop -offs in milk production.
Farmers could get lighting under a US Department of Agriculture Program that is known as the emergency aid for cattle, honey bees and farms-removed fish program or Ellap. The program usually offers help to farmers that are hit by forest fires, drought and floods, but was opened last year for dairy farmers when bird flu started to destroy their cows.
US Department of Agriculture Records shows that 644 payments were made to 359 California Dairy Farms between November 2024 and June 2025 of a total of $ 231 million. The average per agricultural payment was around $ 645,000 and varied from $ 2,058 to the Pereira Melierijboerderij, in Visalia, up to $ 4.4 million to Channel Islands Dairy Farm, in Corcoran.
However, these payments are expected to go much higher, as more claims are submitted and processed. Many of the payments issued in May and June were for outbreaks in 2024, which suggests that more will come.
The aid payments were obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request from Farm Forward, a non -profit group that argues for factory agriculture. The group claims that the subsidies help support dairy activities on an industrial scale that maintain the spread of bird flu.
“These are mega industrial activities that feed an outbreak,” said Andrew Decoriolis, executive director of Farm Forward. “Bird flu spreads exactly in the types of environments that we pay to retain.”
Anja Raudabaugh, the Chief Executive of the largest state trading group in the industry, Western United Dairies, said that the payments have ensured that our dairy communities and their employees remain employed and stay healthy. Until we receive approval from a vaccine for dairy cows, this storm has only been possible with the help of milk loss. ”
Jonathan Cockroft, managing partner of Channel Islands Dairy Farms, said that while the payments helped with the decrease in milk production of around 30% that his farm experienced, his losses exceed the $ 4 million he received.
He said the virus made sure that cows cut their pregnancies and often prevented them from getting pregnant again. A dairy cow that does not give a birth does not produce milk. In other cases, he said that the udders were so drawn by the disease that the cows were unable to produce milk at levels prior to infection.
“There is a completely different version that I am not sure if the audience understands what the enormous impact is on reproduction,” he said.
He also noticed that many animals died – especially when the outbreak struck for the first time last fall, and the novelty in combination with the flaring heat of the Central Valley decreased 10% to 15% of the many Californian herds.
Joey Airoso, a milkman in Tipton, received a $ 1.45 million subsidy last October for an outbreak on his farm.
He said that the outbreak cost him more than $ 2 million “only on the income of the milk and that does not include the more than $ 250,000 extra healthcare costs” that are needed to treat cows with medicines, extra workforce and veterinary consultation.
And it does not cover the costs of the cows that died – which cannot produce milk or can be sold for meat. The average dairy well costs around $ 3,500, Cockroft said.
Jay van Rein, a spokesperson for the California’s Department of Food and Agriculture, said that the loss payments are “the most realistic way for producers to recover and prevent enormous disruptions in the food supply of these products.”
USDA officials did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but a former top -usda officer who left the office in January, said it was important to offer dairy farms as soon as the H5N1 bird flu office had identified in a handful of herds in Texas in March 2024. By that time, the disease had been spreading for weeks, for months, seized.
“This was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and we knew we should support producers, and we knew that the faster we could get some help to help them test, the better we would get, and the faster we could bring the infection under control,” he said.
The decoriolis of Farm Forward and others say that these programs maintain an agricultural industry that is designed around the contain of hundreds, if not thousands, genetically comparable animals in limited plots – real playgrounds for a new virus. He also noted that the federal utilities are not supplied with closed strings, such as incentives for disease restriction and/or biosafility.
Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the vaccine and infectious disease organization of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said that handing out subsidies to farms without trying the practices they use to destroy the disease is a mistake.
“What do they do on the farms to prevent reinfection?” she said.
The USDA payments were based on production losses per cow’s milk for a period of four weeks. According to Farm Forward data, different farms received more than one subsidy. While about half received only one payment, 100 farms received two payments, 58 received three, 19 received four and two received six separate payments.
On one farm in Tulare County, four USDA payments were submitted once a month between November 2024 and February 2025. For another payments that extended from December 2024 to May 2025.
Rasmussen said that the multiple payments were most likely, depending on specific circumstances in the dairy factories involved.
Cockroft of the Channel Islands Dairy said that he and other farmers have seen waves of reinfection and milk tests that remain positive for months. He said he knew a farm that was in quarantine for nine months.
When herds are placed in quarantine, animals may not be transferred on or outside the site. In California, a farm is a farm under quarantine after the first virus detection. It cannot come from quarantine until tests show that the milk is virus-free three weeks in a row.
From Rein, the spokesperson for agriculture, said that the average time under quarantine is 103 days. He said that of the 1,000 herds in California, 940 are not under quarantine; 715 of these were previously infected and released from quarantine.
However, a farmhouse that has been put in quarantine can still sell milk, even if the milk tests positively. Pasteurization has been shown to kill the virus.
The aid payments are a different sign of how the US government supports the agricultural industry, which is considered vital by some for the national interest.
“We have decided politically that this is an industry that we want to support, which was struck by something that was clearly not their fault, and we are going to help them because it was disastrous that the industry struck,” said Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist at UC Davis. “If we thought of these payments, because we use our tax money to help someone in need, because their family is bad, that is not the case.”
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