The state Department of Agriculture is hiding information about bird flu, a legal aid group claims in a lawsuit

A California legal aid group is suing the California Department of Food and Agriculture for refusing to disclose the locations of dairy farms infected with H5N1 bird flu.

More than half of the 70 confirmed human cases of H5N1 bird flu in the United States in the past year have been among dairy workers in California.

California Rural Legal Aid, a nonprofit organization that along with the First Amendment Coalition provides free civil legal services to low-income rural residents, says the California Department of Agriculture is withholding information that can protect the public and allow front-line responders, such as health clinics and labor groups, to help farmers and others at risk of disease.

“As a first principle, the California Constitution and the California Public Records Act guarantee the public a strong right to scrutinize the conduct of their public officials and ensure that they are essentially carrying out the duties entrusted to them,” said David Creman, an attorney with the rural legal group. The lawsuit was filed Monday in Sacramento County Superior Court.

A spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture said he could not comment “because the case is on a case-by-case basis.”

Anja Radabaugh, CEO of Western United Dairy — California’s largest dairy trade group — also declined to comment.

It was a surprise when H5N1 bird flu was found to have infected Texas dairy cattle in March 2024. It soon spread to the workers. Most cases in the United States are mild, but one person has died in Louisiana, and several others have been hospitalized.

Globally, H5N1 has killed hundreds of people. Until recently, the mortality rate was considered to be approximately 50%. Millions of wild birds, mammals, domestic cats and commercial poultry have also been killed. This virus was first discovered in 1996 in Guangdong Province, China.

Public health officials, epidemiologists and infectious disease researchers worry that it would take only a small change in the virus now circulating in dairy cattle and commercial chickens to be able to spread easily between people, or cause serious illness, or both. The more opportunities a virus has to move between individual animals or jump into new species, the more likely such mutations will occur.

In December 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in response to H5N1, saying he wanted to make sure “the people of California have access to accurate and up-to-date information about the disease”.

The state released data on outbreaks in poultry facilities and wild animals nationwide. But it didn’t work for the dairy spread.

Agriculture officials described the infected animals only as the “Central Valley” — an area covering about 20,000 square miles — or Southern California — about 56,000 square miles.

More than 770 dairies in California have been infected since the outbreak began in 2024.

Such vague data “is completely useless for determining where the flu is circulating,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Saskatchewan Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Organization in Canada.

“It’s a bit unclear why this information isn’t clear and transparent,” she said. “I mean, when you’re dealing with a disease that has huge implications in terms of people’s livelihoods and the country’s food supply, to not be transparent about it, I think that’s really harmful in the long run, because what do you do? Like you keep it a secret?”

Crimmins, the attorney, said potential infections among dairy workers could have been prevented if location information had been shared, as groups like his and “other members of the public” could target “awareness and education to at-risk workers and communities.”

The plaintiffs also allege in their filings that the USDA’s “refusal to disclose the locations of H5N1 outbreaks … perpetuated an extremely harsh and unfair balance of information: CDFA (AG Administration) and dairy producers know where and when bird flu outbreaks occur; and public agency workers (the CRLA) do not.”

Other states, including Michigan, Arizona and Nevada, have reported county-wide outbreaks.

The plaintiffs are seeking disclosure of quarantine records, a declaration by a judge that the agency violated the state’s open records law, and — if they succeed — attorney’s fees.