Major Animal Disease Out Break

By Spencer Parkinson, CEO, Founder and President

In a highly connected world where exchange of goods, services and technology continues at a breakneck pace, risks of animal disease and other animal health concerns impacting our nation’s herds and flocks has substantially increased in the last several decades. Three animal disease and health challenges have recently surfaced, leading to major concerns for how to respond to and mitigate these risks.

HPAI in Dairy Cows

A multistate outbreak of the H5N1 strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in dairy cows was first reported on March 25, 2024. This is the first time that these bird flu viruses had been found in cows (https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/mammals.html). Those who follow such outbreaks will recall that HPAI had very severe impacts to the poultry (broilers (meat) chickens, laying hens and turkeys) in 2024-2015. HPAI came back with a vengeance in 2024, leading to all-time prices for eggs.

New World Screwworm

Macro view of a housefly with big red eyes on a green leaf left and a maggot with a dark head on reddish backdrop right.

Compounding other animal health concerns, the U.S. cattle industry is facing mounting pressure from two invasive pests—the New World Screwworm and the Asian Longhorned Tick. The New World Screwworm, a parasitic fly whose larvae feed on the living tissue of warm-blooded animals, has been detected in Mexico, prompting the USDA to halt all live cattle imports from Mexico since May 2025. Previously the USDA suspended cattle imports from Mexico from late November 2024-early February 2025. This import ban disrupts a key supply of feeder cattle, tightening an already constrained market and contributing to lower feeder cattle inventory. Feeder cattle imports from Mexico fell by 65.6% to 210,055 in January-May from 2024 to 2025. The screwworm threat may also lead to reduced calf crop projections and increased biosecurity costs, further straining herd management.

Asian Longhorned Tick

Three tiny brown ticks inch along a thin green grass blade in sharp close-up, set against a softly blurred green backdrop.

Simultaneously, the Asian Longhorned Tick has spread into major cattle-producing states like Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois. This tick transmits Theileria orientalis Ikeda, a disease that causes anemia, weight loss, and even death in cattle. With no approved treatment in the U.S., the disease is increasing mortality rates and reducing productivity, especially in the Midwest.

The effect of the New World Screwworm and the Asian Longhorned Tick could lead to even more elevated cattle and beef prices. The screwworm limits supply through trade restrictions and biosecurity challenges, while the tick increases production costs and reduces output. Together, they reinforce a tightening supply environment, making cattle more expensive to raise and beef more costly for consumers.

A Timely Engagement

With current animal health issues as a backdrop, the timeliness of a current project is worth mentioning here. Beginning in late 2024, the DIS team partnered with the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center at Kansas State University on a project entitled, “Modeling Movement of Fed Cattle from Finishing Operations to Harvest Locations”. This project is funded by the United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA/APHIS). In short, the objectives of this project are:

Model the movement of fed cattle from finishing operations to harvesting locations for twelve core cattle-on-feed cattle producing states in the U.S.
Develop a network of routes across the 12-state region for cattle movement that can be used to understand critical and alternate routes to mitigate the spread of disease.
Simulate and model a foreign animal disease outbreak scenario using the cattle flow numbers to test the permitting system and evaluate the impact of restricted movement on key infrastructure routes.

Our efforts are well underway with project delivery expected at the end of 2025. One of the most time consuming but important steps to complete for this project includes identifying where all the cattle-on-feed feedlots of sufficient size are located in the 12-state region. Thankfully, this tedious (in most cases this required methodically scanning online maps) process is complete and some initial “cattle flows” have been run (Objective 1) to model the movement of cattle to harvesting locations. Once our team is comfortable with these flows, we can complete the second and third objectives. Two state (Iowa and Kansas) maps are included below to illustrate how extensive the identification of cattle-on-feed feedlots was.

Maps of Iowa and Kansas with colored dots marking cattle facilities sized by herd: 5000 or fewer up to more than 10000 per site.

In addition to identifying and mapping cattle facilities, our team also identified and mapped cattle slaughter facilities in the same 12-state study area; Oklahoma is shown below.

Oklahoma map with cattle slaughter facility locations marked by colored dots sized for capacity: five categories, smallest to largest.

As we continue this timely project with the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center and deliver the final results to USDA/APHIS, we look forward to sharing some of the insights we discover in a future article. No doubt, USDA/APHIS and the U.S. cattle industry will use these insights to better understand and prepare for current and future animal health concerns and foreign animal disease outbreaks.