Officials in the most populous U.S. state expect to confirm additional cases in people who have contact with infected dairy cattle, the California Department of Public Health said.

The outlook for more cases follows a surge in infections of dairy cows in the biggest milk-producing U.S. state.

Nearly 300 dairy herds across 14 states tested positive so far this year, with about a third of the cases found in California since late August, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Pasteurized milk and dairy products remain safe to consume, California’s public health department said.

A total of 16 people exposed to dairy cows and poultry have tested positive nationwide in 2024. Another person in Missouri who had no immediate known contact with animals also tested positive.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that cases in people exposed to infected animals are “not unexpected.” Risks to the general public are low, the CDC said.

The virus’ jump to cattle and infections of farm workers have worried scientists and federal officials about the risks to humans.

There is no known link or contact between any of California’s confirmed or possible cases, suggesting the virus spread from animals to humans in the state and not from person to person, the California Department of Public Health said.

All of the people had contact with animals at different farms and experienced mild symptoms, including eye redness or discharge, the department said. It said none were hospitalized.

Last week, California reported two human cases in dairy workers.

In those cases, there were no genetic changes to the virus observed that are known to be associated with an increased ability to infect or spread between people, the CDC said. There were also no changes known to reduce susceptibility to antiviral medications, the agency said.

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More than 190 herds have been infected across the U.S. since March, along with 13 dairy and poultry farm workers, according to federal data. No human cases were confirmed in California, and the virus remains a low risk to the general public.

Efforts to prevent the spread of the virus were being seen at state fairs around the U.S., including he use of fake cows for milking demonstrations, increased testing, quarantines and cancelations of events in some states, according to reports.

Meanwhile, the Philippines lifted its ban on importing domesticated and wild birds, including poultry products, from California and South Dakota, Manila’s farm ministry said on Aug. 31. The Philippines imposed the temporary ban on California in January and on South Dakota in November last year after confirmed outbreaks of H5N1 subtype of the highly pathogenic avian influenza, which has killed millions of infected birds and poultry.

In Canada, there have yet to be any confirmed cases of bird flu in dairy cattle with the last outbreak in a commercial poultry flock coming six months ago. However, cases in wild birds continue to be found. In it’s Sep. 4 report the World Organisation for Animal Health revealed cases of bird flu in wild birds in Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Ontario. Only one primary control zone for highly pathogenetic avian influenza (HPAI) remains active in Canada. That zone involves a premises in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, where the presence of HPAI was found in a backyard poultry flock on November 15, 2023.

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Upholding a permanent injunction, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco found it unconstitutional to force Bayer’s Monsanto unit, which makes Roundup, and other agricultural businesses to provide California’s proposed carcinogen warnings under a state law known as Proposition 65.

Writing for a 2-1 majority, Circuit Judge Consuelo Callahan said making the producers a “billboard” for California’s “at best, disputed” message that glyphosate is unsafe violated their First Amendment commercial speech rights, despite the state’s substantial interest in its citizens’ health.

“Compelling sellers to warn consumers of a potential ‘risk’ never confirmed by any regulatory body — or of a hazard not ‘known’ to more than a small subset of the scientific community — does not directly advance that interest,” she wrote.

Bayer called the decision “a strong blow against compelled warnings for Roundup that are not supported by science and will be important in the company’s ongoing personal injury litigation.”

California’s original warnings linked glyphosate to cancer. A revised warning proposed last year referred to findings in 2015 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the France-based specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic” to humans.

Callahan rejected all the warnings, saying they required Bayer and other objectors to convey a “controversial, fiercely contested message that they fundamentally disagree with.”

Tuesday’s decision upheld a June 2020 injunction issued by U.S. District Judge William Shubb in Sacramento.

“We are disappointed,” the office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, which had appealed the injunction, said in an email. It declined to address whether it planned another appeal.

Lawyers for 13 agriculture and business trade groups that also opposed the warnings did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Bayer has faced extensive litigation over Roundup, including three losses in trials last month, since it bought Monsanto for US$63 billion in 2018.

It settled most Roundup claims for US$10.9 billion in 2020, but by early this year still faced about 45,000 claims.

— Jonathan Stempel is a Reuters correspondent covering U.S. federal and state courts from New York.

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The company, owned by private equity firm Paine Schwartz Partners, has about $679 million in debt, and plans to sell its business in bankruptcy, according to bankruptcy court documents (all figures US$).

Prima grows peaches, nectarines, plums and apricots on its 18,000 acres of farmland in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Prima has struggled under its high debt load, and it has also faced significant setbacks since 2020, including a salmonella outbreak that led to a recall of peaches in the U.S. and the 2020 Creek Fire in California, which damaged orchards and reduced crop yields and quality.

Prima will try to find a buyer for its assets by November, hoping to avoid an upcoming cash crunch between its profitable harvest seasons. Prima has about $26 million in cash, and it could run out of money by January 2024 if it doesn’t find a buyer before next year’s harvest season begins in May, according to court documents.

If no buyer emerges, Prima will pivot to a debt restructuring or a liquidation of its business, according to court documents.

The company was formed from a 2019 merger of Gerawan Farming Inc. and Wawona Packing Company. The company had over $300 million in sales revenue in 2022, with 60 per cent of that coming from sale of peaches, according to court documents.

— Dietrich Knauth reports on U.S. bankruptcy and product liability law for Reuters from New York City.

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Cattle futures were mixed, with live cattle easing on weakening trades in the cash market. Feeder cattle contracts were supported by falling corn prices.

The U.S. Agriculture Department said on Thursday morning that beef export sales in the week ended May 4 totaled 16,600 tonnes, down from 20,100 tonnes a week earlier.

Weekly pork export sales dropped to 30,000 tonnes from 49,000 tonnes. Sales to China, the world’s top consumer of pork, dropped to 5,600 tonnes from 14,200 tonnes.

Signs of lacklustre demand from China despite the end of the country’s zero-tolerance policies to combat COVID-19 have weighed on pork prices throughout the spring. Most actively traded June lean hog futures fell 0.3 cent to settle at 83.875 cents/lb. (all figures US$).

August feeder cattle gained 0.925 cent to 226.075 cents/lb., breaking through its 30-day and 10-day moving averages.

June live cattle dipped 0.05 cent to 162.95 cents/lb.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday preserved a California law banning the sale of pork in America’s most-populous state from pigs kept in tightly confined spaces, rejecting an industry challenge claiming that the voter-backed animal welfare measure impermissibly regulates out-of-state farmers.

— Mark Weinraub is a Reuters commodities correspondent in Chicago.

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The justices voted 5-4 to uphold a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit by the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation seeking to invalidate the law, but they were divided in their reasons for doing so.

The industry had argued that the measure violated a U.S. Constitution provision called the Commerce Clause that courts have interpreted as empowering the federal government – not states – to regulate interstate commerce.

“While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list,” wrote conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who authored the court’s main opinion.

The measure, approved by voters as a 2018 ballot initiative called Proposition 12, bars sales in California of pork, veal and eggs from animals whose confinement failed to meet certain minimum space requirements.

The law mandates pig confinement spaces large enough to enable the animals to turn around, lie down, stand up and extend their limbs.

The pork industry groups argued that the law violated the Constitution by forcing farmers in other states to change their practices in order to sell pork in California, a lucrative market. The Canadian Pork Council signed onto an amicus argument filed last June in support of the U.S. pork groups.

Kitty Block, CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, praised the ruling.

“We won’t stop fighting until the pork industry ends its cruel, reckless practice of confining mother pigs in cages so small they can’t even turn around. It’s astonishing that pork industry leaders would waste so much time and money on fighting this commonsense step to prevent products of relentless, unbearable animal suffering from being sold in California,” said Block, whose group intervened in the case to defend Proposition 12.

Scott Hays, president of the National Pork Producers Council and a Missouri pork producer, voiced disappointment with the Supreme Court’s decision.

“Allowing state overreach will increase prices for consumers and drive small farms out of business, leading to more consolidation,” Hays said.

Seaboard Corp., the third-biggest U.S. pig producer, is prepared to supply California customers with “limited supplies of compliant pork” starting on July 1, company spokesperson David Eaheart said.

The company, which runs Seaboard Foods, converted a portion of its farms and plant operations to meet California’s requirements before the Supreme Court’s decision, Eaheart said.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a partial dissent that was joined by fellow conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh, as well as liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The four said they would have allowed the challengers to the California law to pursue their claim in the lower courts.

“In my view, petitioners plausibly allege a substantial burden against interstate commerce,” Roberts wrote.

California farms collectively are only a small part of the US$26 billion-a-year U.S. pork industry. The size of cages used at U.S. pig farms is humane and necessary for animal safety, according to the industry, which asserts that California’s law gives the state unwarranted influence over the pork sector.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration sided with the pork producers in the case, saying that states cannot ban products that pose no threat to public health or safety due to philosophical objections.

Proposition 12 set the required space for breeding pigs, or sows, at 24 square feet. The current industry standard is between 14 and 20 square feet, according to a 2021 report from Dutch banking and financial services company Rabobank.

The Supreme Court took up the case after the San Francisco-based Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a judge’s decision to throw out the pork industry challenge.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nate Raymond in Boston and Andrew Chung in New York; additional reporting John Kruzel in Washington and Tom Polansek in Chicago.

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Montreal-based Saputo announced last Thursday it has construction underway on a new $240 million cut-and-wrap cheese plant in the Milwaukee suburb of Franklin, to be up and running at capacity by the third quarter of 2025 (all figures Cdn$).

When the new plant is ready, Saputo said it expects to transfer other packaging operations there. To that end, the company said it plans to close its plant at Big Stone City, S.D., about 200 km south of Fargo, in the third quarter of next fiscal year, and another Wisconsin plant at Green Bay in its 2025 Q3.

Also, another Saputo plant at Tulare, California previously slated to be shut down will now get $75 million in renovations to convert to string cheese packaging, to be up and running at capacity by Q3 of 2025.

After that, a Los Angeles-area string cheese packaging plant, at South Gate, will be closed and its work transferred to the converted Tulare site, about 300 km north.

Saputo said the investment at Tulare “will help support the company’s growth ambitions and sustain its leadership position in the string cheese product category.”

In all, Saputo said, while the new Franklin plant alone is expected to take on about 600 people, about 720 positions will be affected in the pending plant closures. Affected workers will be offered opportunities to relocate to other Saputo plants and, if no spots are available, the workers will get “severance and outplacement support.”

The projects announced last Thursday “aim to solidify our ability to meet current and future customer demand and further improve our cost structure,” said Saputo CEO Lino Saputo said in a release.

Improving its capacity to produce goods in its higher-margin value-added categories will “fuel our aspirations to further enhance our value proposition as a high-quality, low-cost processor” in the U.S., he said.

The plant consolidations and investments are expected to improve Saputo’s bottom line by up to $74 million per year ($55 million after taxes) by the end of its fiscal 2027, the company said.

Saputo’s U.S. dairy division makes, sells and distributes a “vast assortment” of cheeses, including mozzarella, American-style and specialty cheeses, among other products. In its fiscal 2022, ending last March 31, U.S. revenue made up 43 per cent of the company’s total.

During that fiscal year, the company said in its annual report, its U.S. dairy division was its “most challenged platform,” up against “substantial commodity volatility” as well as “labour, inflation and supply chain pressures.”

The company’s U.S. arm in fiscal 2022 booked gross revenue of $6.41 billion, up from $6.12 billion the previous year, but the U.S. arm’s EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) came in at $288 million for 2022, down from $567 million.

Saputo’s U.S. sector has since booked improved revenue and EBITDA in each of its first and second quarters for fiscal 2023, for combined EBITDA of $199 million on revenue of $4.1 billion, up from $163 million on $3.039 billion in the year-earlier first half. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Chunli Zhao, 66, the lone suspect in Monday’s massacre at two mushroom farms in the seaside town of Half Moon Bay, was to be formally presented with seven counts of premeditated murder and a single count of attempted murder in a criminal complaint filed by local prosecutors.

The hearing was held at the San Mateo County Superior Court in nearby Redwood City, California.

The complaint against Zhao also alleged “special circumstances” accusing Zhao of “personally and intentionally” shooting to kill.

California law declares that defendants convicted of murder with “special circumstances” can be eligible for the death penalty, but Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019 declared a moratorium on executions. The state has not executed a condemned inmate since 2006.

Also on Wednesday, U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris, a California native, planned to travel to the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park, site of the first of the recent deadly rampages. She was expected to meet with some families of the 11 people who were fatally shot in a dance hall on Saturday night by a gunman who later took his own life.

Coming in quick succession, the two shooting sprees left California reeling from one of the bloodiest spates of mass gun violence in decades in a state with some of the strictest firearm laws in the country.

Zhao was taken into custody on Monday evening outside a sheriff’s station, where police said he had driven shortly after the attack on farm workers.

The precise motive for the shooting remained unclear. Zhao had been employed by one of the growers, Mountain Mushroom Farm, and had resided at the property along with some other employees, according to a spokesperson for California Terra Gardens, which owns the farm. Authorities said early evidence indicated the bloodshed stemmed from a workplace grievance. The second crime scene, Concord Farms, is about a mile away.

Immigrant victims

Half Moon Bay, a community of about 12,000 residents south of San Francisco, is home to both a luxury resort and a low-income farming community. The shooting cast a renewed spotlight on hardships faced by the area’s farm workers, many of them immigrants from Latin America and Asia who often live in squalid labour encampments and toil long hours under poor conditions for extremely low pay.

The San Mateo County Coroner named six of the seven deceased victims on Wednesday and listed their ages as between 43 and 73. Charging documents listed the dead as Yetao Bing, Qizhong Cheng, Jingzhi Lu, Zhishen Liu, Aixiang Zhang, Jose Romero and Marciano Martinez Jimenez.

Jose Romero’s brother Pedro was also injured in the attack and was hospitalized as of Tuesday, the brothers’ cousin Jose Juarez told Reuters. Juarez said the brothers had immigrated from Mexico and worked at Mountain Mushroom Farm.

Two days before the Half Moon Bay killings, another gunman 615 km to the south opened fire at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, a club frequented mostly by older patrons of Asian descent in Monterey Park.

Eleven people died and nine were injured in Saturday night’s gunfire, which some survivors and bystanders said they initially mistook for fireworks as the predominantly Asian-American community was observing the start of the Lunar New Year.

Authorities said the assailant, Huu Can Tran, 72, drove a short time later to a second dance hall in the neighbouring town of Alhambra. There, the club’s operator disarmed him before he could open fire.

The next morning, Tran shot himself to death behind the wheel of his getaway vehicle as police closed in on him south of Los Angeles, leaving investigators with few clues as to his motive.

— Reporting for Reuters by Alexandra Ulmer in Half Moon Bay, Calif.; additional reporting by Tim Reid, Gabriella Borter, Rich McKay, Brendan O’Brien, Brad Brooks, Jonathan Allen, Joseph Ax, Dan Whitcomb, Eric Beech, Omar Younis and Timothy Gardner; writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles.

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The nine consecutive rainstorms that inundated California in succession since Dec. 26 killed at least 20 people while tens of thousands remained under evacuation orders as of Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom said in an executive order that reinforced the state’s response to storm damage.

“The last of the heavier rain in California is slowly fading. After midnight it shouldn’t be heavy anymore,” said meteorologist David Roth of the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.

Biden will travel to areas of the central coast on Thursday to meet first responders, visit affected towns, and “assess what additional federal support is needed,” the White House said.

The president had already issued an emergency declaration on Jan. 8 to free up federal aid and then on Saturday authorized disaster assistance for Merced, Sacramento and Santa Cruz counties.

The White House has yet to reveal the areas Biden will visit.

Among the more dramatic images of storm damage were those of Highway 1, the scenic coastal highway near Big Sur, which was closed at several points due to mudslides and falling boulders strewn across the road.

Water supplies still limited

While damaging, the storms also helped mitigate a historic drought, as much of the state has already received half or more its average annual rainfall.

But with more than two months to go in the rainy season, officials are urging Californians to continue conserving water. The U.S. Drought Monitor still shows almost the entire state under moderate or severe drought conditions. Reservoir levels were still below average for this time of year, officials said.

Moreover, the atmospheric rivers largely failed to reach the Colorado River basin, a critical source of southern California’s water.

“If you rely on the Colorado River basin as a part of your water supply, then there will be continuing drought problems due to the extreme drought in that part of the world,” Michael Anderson, California’s state climatologist, told reporters.

The Colorado’s two major reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, were at 28.5 and 22.6 per cent of capacity, respectively, and still below levels from this time a year ago according to Water-Data.com.

The ninth consecutive atmospheric river fizzled out on Monday, its remnants soaking the southernmost part of the state, Arizona and northern Mexico, Roth said.

The storms are akin to rivers in the sky that carry moisture from the Earth’s tropics to higher latitudes, dumping massive amounts of rain.

Another storm was coming that could bring moderate rain on Tuesday and Wednesday. The U.S. National Weather Service said it lacked the volume to be classified as an atmospheric river, while the state Department of Water Resources said it may briefly qualify as one.

California can otherwise expect dry conditions for the remainder of January, state officials said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, Calif., and Rich McKay in Atlanta.

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In Monterey County along the state’s central coast, communities near the still-rising Salinas River were under an evacuation order, as authorities warned that the cresting waterway could cut off homes and businesses from essential services.

As many as 19 people have been killed in the storms, including two deaths announced on Wednesday — one person found dead in a submerged car in Sonoma County north of San Francisco, and another who was pulled from the American River in El Dorado County on Jan. 3.

A five-year-old boy swept away in San Luis Obispo County had still not been found by Wednesday evening.

At least two more storm systems were set to pound California and the Pacific Northwest starting Friday and over the weekend, the National Weather Service said, including another atmospheric river, systems of dense moisture funneled into California from the tropical Pacific. The state has already been hit with seven such weather systems over the past two weeks.

Precipitation from the storms will fall as rain along the coast and snow in the Sierra Nevada and other mountain ranges, the National Weather Service said.

Cut off from services

In Monterey County, water from prior storms continued to swell the Salinas River, officials said. Some residents of the Monterey Peninsula and parts of the Salinas area could be cut off from other communities for as many as three days as roads flood.

“My husband went and got some provisions, just things we needed, so if we’re going to be here two to three days or however long we may be stranded, we’re good to go,” said Diane Souza, a retired office manager who decided to ride out the storm in the community of Spreckels near the river.

The couple put sandbags around their garage, which sits lower than the rest of the house, and put together a bag with emergency items in case they need to flee.

Not far away, the muddy Salinas River flowed at a steady pace, widening and encroaching on nearby trees. The tops of fences could be seen just above the rising water.

Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto said her officers had gone door-to-door in communities affected by evacuation orders, urging people to leave. She said the river was expected to hit flood stage by 11 p.m. Thursday night and remain high through the weekend.

Dozens of roadways across the state were made impassable by mudslides and snow as the state’s department of transportation urged drivers to stay off impacted roads until crews could clear the way.

In the state capital of Sacramento, crews continued to clear fallen trees and restore power on Thursday, aiming to complete as much of the work as possible before rains begin again on Friday.

The heavy rains have eased California’s historic drought but not ended it, the U.S. Drought Monitor showed Thursday. The state is no longer considered to be in extreme drought or exceptional drought, the two worst categories, but much of the state is still considered to be experiencing moderate or severe drought conditions.

Even with more atmospheric rivers in the immediate forecast, the state’s water system will remained strained in coming years without new infrastructure to capture more storm water, restore flood plains and recycle wastewater.

— Reporting for Reuters by Sharon Bernstein; additional reporting by Nathan Frandino.

Explainer: Why weeks of rain in California will not end historic drought

By Daniel Trotta

Reuters — California has been deluged since Dec. 26 by seven atmospheric rivers that have dumped up to 76 cm of rain over some areas, but the drought that has gripped the western U.S. remains far from over.

Virtually none of the storms has reached the Colorado River basin, which means the river that provides drinking water to 40 million people in seven states will continue to be endangered.

Even with more atmospheric rivers in the immediate forecast, and larger and more frequent ones predicted in the future, California cannot solve its long-term water crisis without major infrastructure investments to capture more storm water, restore flood plains and recycle wastewater.

Meanwhile, California’s US$50 billion agricultural industry continues to consume 80 per cent of the state’s supply.

Weather whiplash

Climate change means climate extremes. As California experiences more severe droughts and heat waves, its occasional wet years are expected to be excessively rainy. But the state’s water infrastructure, mostly built in the 20th century when the population was barely half of today’s 40 million, is ill-equipped for the new situation.

On Dec. 14, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California declared a drought emergency for all 19 million people in the region. A few weeks later, the state was underwater with major flooding.

Despite a deluge that by one estimate has been expected to dump more than 80 trillion litres, the state’s major reservoirs remain well below their historic average. The largest reservoirs, at Shasta and Oroville, are still at 42 and 47 per cent of capacity, according to state data.

The shortfall underscores the severity of the drought. A report published in the journal Nature last year found 2000 to 2021 to be the driest 22-year period for southwestern North America in at least 1,200 years.

Infrastructure deficit

The state’s infrastructure, largely a network of cement canals, lacks the capacity to capture excess stormwater.

Irrigation and flood control projects were largely designed to convey water as quickly as possible in straight lines. That deprives flood plains of water taking a natural meandering path that would better protect adjacent cities from floods while also helping recharge the aquifer below.

With temperatures rising, snowpack in the mountains is melting more rapidly each spring, and the state lacks enough storage capacity to conserve the runoff.

California Governor Gavin Newsom plans to ramp up infrastructure spending, including US$8.6 billion budgeted for drought and flood management next year. Billions more are available under a major U.S. infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in 2021.

But until that money is converted to projects, excess stormwater will continue to drain into the Pacific Ocean.

Colorado River under stress

Arid southern California relies on two external sources to slake its thirst: aqueous northern California, through massive state and federal conveyance systems; and the Colorado River, under a century-old compact that assigns its water to seven states, with California receiving the largest allotment.

But the compact was written after an unusually wet period, assigning the states more water than the river can now provide. Even as the Colorado River basin faces its own drought, and the atmospheric rivers provide no relief, the Colorado River suffers more from overuse than from a lack of precipitation.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has warned the seven states in the compact — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — that they must negotiate a new agreement to reduce consumption 15-30 per cent by Jan. 31 or else face mandatory cuts imposed by the federal government.

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