Bird flu has spread on a Utah mink farm for more than two months, and officials have not ordered the animals killed or the workers tested

The outbreak has been running since late summer, and the animals are still there. ProPublica reported on October 23 that H5N1 bird flu has spread for more than two months at C&T Fenn Farms, which raises thousands of mink for fur west of Provo, about an hour south of Salt Lake City. Utah agriculture officials learned in mid August that mink were dying of the virus.

The state put the farm under a verbal hold. It did not order the mink killed. Public records obtained by the Animal Welfare Institute and reported by The Salt Lake Tribune include an internal message from August 21 in which a state agriculture official set out three options, vaccination, depopulation, or, in the official's own words, watch them die. The records point to an expected death rate around 80 percent.

Poultry gets a different answer. Federal rules require a farmer to kill a whole flock when a single chicken tests positive, and the government pays for the loss. No federal rules govern sick mink. Officials at the US Department of Agriculture told Utah they do not regulate mink and have no vaccine approved for them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spoke with state health officials, but by ProPublica's account the agency never talked to the state veterinarian in charge, Amanda Price, and she never reached out to it.

Workers are not being watched either. Utah policy is to begin active monitoring of farm workers only when evidence of human to human transmission appears. A ProPublica reporter found two farm workers last Saturday, and one had a visibly red eye, the most common sign of bird flu infection in people. The farm's owner, Chad Fenn, said the worker got dust in his eye and that it had cleared by Monday. The county health department did not recommend testing and told him testing would be needed only if more symptoms developed, such as a cough or a sore throat.

Mink worry flu specialists because their airways carry receptors much like the ones in human noses and throats. A virus that learns to live in mink gets practice at living in something close to a person. The strain that has moved through American barns for four years has killed two Americans who caught it from sick animals, and it cannot yet pass between people. CDC figures count 72 human cases in the United States since February 2024, most of them from dairy cows, and no mink to human infections, as of October 15. Flu experts used hard words for the decisions in Utah. One called the response playing with fire. Gail Hansen, a former Kansas state public health veterinarian, put the question plainly. "Utah doesn't want to be the epicenter of the next human flu outbreak, right?"