Political Feasibility, Negative Failure and Public Health Surveillance in a Time of Political Transition

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Nathan Myers
December 20, 2024

The United States government continues to advocate vigilance amid a growing number of cases of H5N1 avian influenza among dairy cattle and poultry flocks. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has raised particular concerns about the potential for virus to be transmitted through milk, particularly unpasteurized milk. Recently the USDA announced plans to begin bulk testing of milk as a surveillance measure. A major issue potentially affecting this strategy is the upcoming transition between the Biden and Trump administrations.

Whether or not the milk testing strategy continues will likely depend on the way the H1N1 problem is defined and the data used to measure the scope of the problem, in keeping with the policy analysis approach outlined by Milakovich and Gordon. While the number of human cases of H5N1 have been limited and non-fatal thus far, the Biden administration deems the risk severe enough to institute a national surveillance strategy. However, the incoming Trump administration may look at the data and see the situation differently, leaving testing in the hands of the states or the milk industry. This presents the risk of not detecting a mutation that could lead to human transmission.

Dror’s discussion of policy analysts notes the importance of considering political feasibility, recruitment of support, accommodations of contradicting goals and recognition of diversity of values. The milk testing strategy will only be feasible moving forward if it earns the confidence of members of Congress, governors and state legislators from milk producing states, the milk industry, and incoming Trump officials. Current officials overseeing the milk testing program can work on recruiting support from industry groups and public health organizations, which will involve balancing public health protections, maintaining milk prices and being mindful of civil liberties. 

Program implementation will be key to producing results with the milk testing strategy. Rivlin notes that that successful program implantation requires being mindful of two types of failure: positive and negative failure. Positive failure, as explained by Rivlin, is the failure to create program incentives to channel the efforts of program administrators and operators toward accomplishing shared objectives. Negative failure is failure to account for private incentives that stand in opposition to program objectives or to modify rewards and penalties that counter social objectives. Both of these elements will be important to the implementation of the milk test program as it will involve coordination among federal and state officials, milk producers and testing labs. In this case, one obvious concern among milk producers would be how a positive test for the virus will affect their ability to market their product.

Stachler, et al. wrote about a state-level example of a successful metagenomic surveillance program developed using 214 retail milk samples from 20 states. The sequencing methods developed through the use of those samples allowed for the creation of a system to conduct monthly bulk milk testing in Massachusetts. As of the publication of the article, no positive samples have been detected, and the authors offer their approach as a framework for developing other statewide programs.

In their press release announcing the strategy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture outlined a five-stage strategy. The first stage involves nationwide testing at dairy processing facilities, with the second stage focusing on bulk tank sampling in particular states to identify areas of concern. Continuing from stage 2, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in the third stage will take steps to identify specific cases and take immediate actions to contain the spread of the outbreak. After an affected state stops showing positive cases, APHIS in stage 4 will continue to conduct bulk testing until tanks demonstrate negative findings for an extended period. Stage 5 calls for continued periodic sampling and testing once all states are testing negative to maintain an absence of the virus in the milk supply.

The Biden administration has deemed the H5N1 risk serious enough to put in place a national milk testing strategy. Research by scientists like Stachler, et al. have demonstrated methods that can be effective in monitoring a state’s milk supply. Whether this strategy continues into the Trump administration will come down to issues of political feasibility and controlling for negative failure. In regard to political feasibility, the program will need to earn bipartisan political support, particularly among politicians in dairy states. This will be an exercise in cooperative federalism, as it will require buy-in from elected leaders at the federal, state and local level. Groups like the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense could provide important input on this, as they’ve recently focused on influenza control and One Health issues in their meetings.  

The USDA will also have to control for negative failure in regard to the dairy industry and related private interests who might push back against the strategy if they regard the additional cost to outweigh any added protection. For an incoming administration whose president was previously criticized for his management of the COVID-19 pandemic, this will be a first test of whether his second administration will embrace proactive public health surveillance. However, it is the responsibility of the current USDA to demonstrate administrative capacity through the strategy’s design and implementation.  

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Author: Nathan Myers, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Master of Public Administration at Indiana State University. His areas of research include public policy, public health emergency preparedness, and the governance of biotechnology. He is the author of Pandemics and Polarization: Implications of Partisan Budgeting for Responding to Public Health Emergencies and numerous related articles. Myers is a graduate of Knox College (BA), University of Illinois at Springfield (MPA), and University of Nevada, Las Vegas (Ph.D.)

Email: [email protected]; Twitter: nagremye1980 

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