evidence: Latest on POLITICO 2024 ELECTIONS [...] Federal officials have been scrambling to track and trace the bird flu outbreak that was first detected in dairy cows in Texas in March, with one confirmed human case in a Texas dairy worker. But they’ve struggled to access farms to collect data, due to pushback from state agriculture officials and farmers. Just this week, USDA announced four additional dairy herds in Michigan and one in Colorado have tested positive for avian influenza, raising the total to 42 herds in nine states. [...] The current bird flu outbreak, which stretches back to 2022, has killed or forced the culling of millions of birds in backyard flocks and commercial poultry and egg facilities but the virus is not fatal in cattle. Though the Biden administration announced new testing requirements for lactating cattle intended to slow the spread, public health experts have said the move was inadequate and that the federal government has been too slow to release new data about the virus. Since the start of the outbreak, USDA says it has conducted more than 7,500 tests. Under the federal order, officials are seeing roughly 80 more tests per day.