Some dairy farmworkers say they’re struggling to get basic resources like PPE, testing, and flu shots needed to protect themselves from possible bird flu infections, even after connecting with their local and state health department.
That’s according to the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC), which issued a press release Thursday describing recent situations in which they say workers tried to get testing, vaccines, and personal protective equipment, but ran into barriers and delays.
While the CDC says the risk of bird flu to the general public is still low, cases have been picking up speed in the past year, with 70 reported human cases in the U.S. so far, including one death. Dairy herds have been the source of infection in 41 of those cases, including two dairy farmworkers in Michigan in May.
In mid-January 2025, a group of 20 dairy farmworkers in the Upper Peninsula “reported being sick with flu-like symptoms,” according to the MIRC release. “The illness spread quickly among the workers.”
On January 22, the local health department (MIRC staff attorneys declined to say which health department, to protect the identity of the workers) said “they did not have H5N1 PPE, tests, treatments, or vaccines readily available, nor do they have the staff and language resources needed to communicate effectively with this vulnerable workforce,” the release said.
“They didn’t have free flu vaccines, and these workers couldn’t afford to pay for flu vaccines,” said Anna Hill Galendez, managing attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center.
Seasonal flu vaccines don’t protect against avian influenza, but they’re highly recommended for people with exposure to potentially infected animals, because a co-infection of human seasonal flu and avian flu could theoretically result in a mutation of avian flu that’s better adapted to spreading between humans. (In July, the CDC said it would spend $10 million on preventing bird flu infection in farmworkers, including $5 million for providing seasonal flu shots, Reuters reported.)
The local health department did eventually provide paper masks and COVID testing, and it took about two weeks “before they were able to get access to seven avian flu tests, which wasn’t going to be enough for all of those workers,” Hill Galendez said.
The health department also arranged a testing site for workers, but there was a miscommunication, she said, and the farmworkers weren’t sure whether their employer would allow them to attend.
“Dairy farmworkers often work 12-hour shifts, six or seven days a week,” she said. “There’s a lot of concern for many workers about missing work, for fear of being fired. And so they’re often looking to their employer to facilitate access to these resources, or to feel like they’re being given permission to access these kind of resources. And so it can be really hard to figure out how to get these resources to dairy workers in a way that they can actually take advantage of them. So in this situation, that communication didn’t work out in a way that allowed them to actually get access to that testing.”
An MDHHS spokesperson said it “quickly responded to reports of farmworkers in the Upper Peninsula with symptoms consistent with respiratory illnesses like influenza. To protect their health and safety, MDHHS worked with the farmworkers’ local health department (LHD) to make resources available including translation services, influenza testing, influenza vaccination and personal protective equipment (PPE).”
But MIRC said it took a month for the farmworkers to eventually get PPE. It also provided a written statement from an unnamed U.P. farm worker:
“The reason for sharing what I’m going to say is that we’re workers on a farm and we’ve been affected by a flu/virus, a cough that none of us has been able to avoid,” the statement said in part. “We spent one or two days in bed suffering from a fever and sore throat…We hope that through this communication, there can be protective equipment for the other ranches, since we’ve already gotten PPE at the ranch where we are working…If the protective equipment had arrived faster, we might not all have gotten sick.”
Milk testing and flu shots
The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) “did go out to test either the farm’s cows or milk within about two weeks of the first reported illness,” Hill Galendez, the MIRC attorney, said. “We weren’t aware of that testing at the time, but later learned that that took place and those tests came back negative.”
A spokesperson for MDARD said the agency “has tested bulk milk on all dairy farms in the U.P. and all have been negative for HPAI.”
CDC guidance recommends testing symptomatic people who’ve been exposed to infected animals, the MDHHS spokesperson said via email Thursday.
“Recent bulk milk testing at Upper Peninsula dairy farms by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) was negative for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), which meant exposure to animals sick with HPAI was not suspected among these farmworkers. MDHHS and the LHD made the decision to offer seasonal influenza testing to these workers, as their illnesses occurred at a time when there was extremely high respiratory virus activity, including seasonal influenza.”
But to date, those U.P. farmworkers still haven’t received their seasonal flu shots, Hill Galendez said. “The emphasis is over and over again on animal health, over human health. And so we see that focus again on the health of animals and consumer safety, over workers and protecting workers.”
The MDHHS spokesperson said seasonal flu shots were offered to the workers, but “I do not believe they took us/the LHD [local health department] up on the offer.”
Getting vaccines to farmworkers
MIRC also described a dairy worker in Barry County “who noticed her co-workers were sick and wanted to avoid contracting the illness,” and reached out “to the local health clinic [but] was told they didn’t have the avian flu vaccine.” That same worker then contacted her local health department, but staff there didn’t speak Spanish.
An MDHHS outreach worker was able to assist her in communicating with that health department a few days later, but the worker was “disappointed” to learn that avian flu vaccines aren’t currently available in the U.S. (Some countries like Finland have been offering them to farmworkers.)
“It’s important to recognize that there are workers that are looking for these protections and we could be making them available, but we aren’t,” Hill Galendez said. “Dairy workers that understand their risks really [and] are looking for protection for themselves.”
(Last week, Bloomberg News reported the Trump administration has paused a $590 million contract the Biden administration made with Moderna for bird flu shots. It also canceled a key FDA meeting about which strains of flu to target in next year’s flu shot.)
The Barry-Eaton County District Health Department said it was contacted by several farms and farmworkers last year, “and was able to quickly fulfill all PPE requests. However, BEDHD has not been contacted by any farm owners or workers since June 2024.”
And while the department isn’t allocated adult seasonal flu vaccines, they can administer them if a farmworker is unable to get one at a local pharmacy or health care provider. The department also said it can provide flu testing and the flu medication, Tamiflu, for symptomatic farmworkers from farms where highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has been detected.
Asked about how many farmworkers have received seasonal flu vaccines at MDHHS outreach events for farmworkers, a department spokesperson didn’t specify, but said it is working with several partners, including “a CDC project specifically to increase seasonal influenza vaccine coverage in dairy and poultry workers in several Michigan counties…As part of this, we have run some local events where we have administered doses of flu vaccine.”
Farmworkers are especially vulnerable right now, Hill Galendez said, and their employers often aren’t offering the recommended PPE. The challenges of reaching dairy farmworkers means it’s more important than ever to offer mobile testing and flu vaccine clinics, and proactively distribute PPE directly to workers, she said.
“That would all go a long way to make sure that dairy workers actually get access to these resources.”
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