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A mysterious virus has been infecting cattle herds across the central and southern U.S. for the past few weeks.\u00a0 For Texas ranchers recovering from recent wildfires that burned more than 1 million acres<\/a>, it\u2019s poor timing.<\/p>\n The Texas Department of Agriculture started getting widespread reports of an unidentified disease affecting around 40% of cattle herds in the state\u2019s panhandle a little less than a month ago, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller tells Fortune.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe tested for everything\u2014every disease known to infect cows,\u201d Miller says. \u201cThey all came back negative.\u201d But after weeks of uncertainty, U.S. Department of Agriculture testing revealed on March 25<\/a> that the disease was highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), a form of bird flu that had never been detected in cattle before.<\/p>\n HPAI is a much more common issue for poultry flocks, and the virus is so dangerous that infected birds have to be killed to stop it spreading. Between 2022 and 2023, almost 60 million chickens and turkeys were killed<\/a> on American farms for HPAI prevention purposes. Authorities haven\u2019t been requiring cattle ranchers to kill infected animals: Miller said that the cattle are \u201cend hosts\u201d and there\u2019s no evidence that they can transmit the virus. The disease has also spread to other species in the past, including seals and sea lions<\/a>, but infections in humans are exceedingly rare<\/a>.<\/p>\n What the disease outbreak means for the milk supply<\/strong><\/p>\n Infected cows generally exhibit flu-like symptoms and produce less milk, Miller says, which raised some concerns<\/a> that if the disease becomes widespread, there could be a milk shortage\u2014but Miller dismissed those worries.<\/p>\n \u201cCustomers need not worry: there\u2019s not going to be a milk shortage,\u201d Miller says. \u201cThe price of milk should remain stable.\u201d<\/p>\n Knowing that milk came from an infected cow could feel unsettling to some, but consumers don\u2019t need to worry about getting sick, experts say.<\/p>\n \u201cMilk from [infected] cows is very identifiable, so it never made it into the food system\u2014and even if it did, any pathogens would be removed by pasteurization,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to paint a rosy picture, but it\u2019s really not that bad\u2026There\u2019s not going to be a huge economic impact.\u201d<\/p>\n Authorities believe that cows likely contracted the virus by drinking from water sources where infected migratory birds had recently been swimming. If that\u2019s the case, time is on the ranchers\u2019 side. Most of the potentially infectious migratory birds have already passed through the state, Miller said.<\/p>\n \u201cCowboy logic tells me that the migratory season is almost over, and almost all the waterfowl have gone north, so we\u2019re probably at the tail end of this,\u201d Miller said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nSubscribe to Impact Report, a weekly newsletter on the trends and issues shaping corporate sustainability. Sign up<\/a> for free.<\/div>\n