Shows›Nite Lite with Pete Schwaba and Greg Bach›Dr. Keith Poulsen on the Bird Flu in Wisconsin (Hour 1)›Transcript

Transcript

Dr. Keith Poulsen on the Bird Flu in Wisconsin (Hour 1)

Nite Lite with Pete Schwaba and Greg Bach · Mon Mar 16, 2026

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From Washington to Hollywood and right back to Wisconsin.

It's Night Light with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.

Connecting the dots on the stories shaping our world with smart takes, sharp humor, and plenty of personality.

You know, I really expected more professional behavior from you.

It's news and culture without the noise.

Yeah, come on!

Here's Pete Schwabba.

Dude.

And Greg Bach.

Dude.

Oh, it is so good to be with all of you tonight.

Welcome to Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and my very patient co-host, Greg Bach.

It is great to be with you.

Happy Monday.

Happy Post Storm Monday, folks.

Greg, how are you?

Did you

get through it okay?

I got through it fine.

Southeastern Wisconsin, Kenosha, where I live, we did not get hit that badly.

I got probably about...

Three inches and then with some drift there, but not bad.

It wasn't it was the thing was the problem for us I think personally is the fact that we got a ton of rain the day before and Then it snowed.

So all the snow was really wet and really heavy.

So that was not great, but as as our senior producer

Tucker or now as I'm referring to him as tea sizzle He said that you know and I agree it wasn't that bad compared to other parts of the state who just got and like you you got walloped so I'm just happy to see you here today because there was a good chance you were not going to be on the show

It was kind of a last-minute thing every I was striking out everywhere and we figured something out and I'm at my sister's house right now Because she's the only person in the area that had power

and she doesn't have spectrum.

So power went out for some, spectrum for others, all my backup plans were squashed, but my sister Julie coming through in a pinch, she's got her power and bright speed.

So go figure

it out.

I'll tell you all about my weather issues in just a couple of minutes, but yeah,

we got

it.

We got hit.

We have, but we also have a really good show folks.

And every time I say that, I cannot not feel like it's all, we've got a really good show folks.

We were talking to Dr. Keith Paulson today and after the 530 news, we're going to be talking about the fact that bird flu is back.

It was here sometime about a year ago and now it's back.

And we're going to talk to him about.

what we should look out for, how we avoid it, and also what can be affected.

I mean, one of the things that the bird flu really hit hard was the egg prices back in 2024, which was a huge concern for a lot of people.

And we just want to take a look at that and be aware.

And so he will be here after the 5 30 news.

And then in the six o'clock hour, very excited about this, a friend of both of ours.

She is a comedian, a writer performer.

She's a voice actor.

She has performed.

This is a big thing for me.

She's performed on the stage of the Grand Old Opry.

Mary Mack will be

here talking about her comedy.

She's doing a tour right now.

It's gonna be very fun to talk to her.

She is so great.

I don't know her the way you do.

I've only had her on the show before.

I've gotten to know her that way.

But she, literally, Greg, when there's a guest on and they're funny, you laugh, but with Mary, she caught me so off guard the first time she was on the show.

I was not expecting her to be that funny and

stick

to that character.

And it just cracked me up.

I'm so glad she's here.

Which is funny because when people listen to her, what people have to understand is that

That's not much of a character.

Mary is Mary.

And it's going to be a really good time.

I'm very much looking forward to it.

And then, you know, just, you know, it'll be, we'll have a really, we'll have a really good show.

I can't stop saying that.

My goodness.

I have to really, I feel like I'm going to get sued by the estate of Ed Sullivan or something like that.

She'll be on at six 20 and she'll be with us.

That'll be really great.

And then we'll have ourselves.

We didn't, we didn't refer to this last week, but the end of the show, the nightcap.

Love it.

That'll always be fun.

The little wrap up.

We put a bow on every edition of nightlight moving forward.

It's going to be great.

We've got a fun contest coming up, Greg, very shortly and a great question too.

Oh, that's right too.

So let's take care of the contest first.

We'll get to the question next.

Dom, I know this is the very last second.

I apologize.

Do you have big music, like, something like that?

I mean, I have this, you know?

There we go.

I'll take it.

I will take it.

I didn't ask before.

That's quick thinking on his part.

Pete, Dom, folks out there, we are on the first day of our break into spring text to win multi-state contest.

This is how it works.

Every day we will have multiple chances to win.

We'll have seven separate opportunities to win $200.

I'm sorry, you enter in daily for $200 daily prize.

I'm sorry.

incorrectly.

I'll just read the copy.

It's your daily chance to win $200 plus every entry you're going to put in there will get you into a drawing for a brand new mattress set from Verlo.

So here's how it's going to work.

We're going to give you a word and you're going to open up your civic media app.

You're going to text in this word to us.

Spelling counts.

Capitalization does not.

You text once and once every time we do this.

So seven times throughout the day, you are in for that daily $200 prize.

And you must have the Civic Media app to enter.

So that's also can't call can't text just through your phone has to be this through the Civic Media app.

You can't put it on the live stream must be through the Civic Media app.

If you don't have the app, download it right this moment.

You will have one full hour to participate.

So this is how it's going to work.

I'm going to give you the word.

Here is the word.

The word is there.

Queen Q U E E N. Text that word in right now via the Civic Media app for your chance to win $200 and for an entry into a grand prize drawing for a brand new mattress set from Verlo.

Again, that word is Queen Q U.

E-E-N, spelling counts, and we will get back to you if you do spell it wrong, because people have spelled it wrong.

But good luck, Queen, Q-U-E-E-N.

All right, you have one hour, and good luck to all of you friends.

Yeah, that's exciting, that's a great, I actually have a Verlo mattress, and I can say that.

My brother had one, he swore by it.

For what it's worth, it's a great mattress fire.

Brand new

bed?

Who doesn't want a brand new bed?

Oh God, Pete, my God, when we moved into our house, we didn't get a verlo.

I'm sorry, verlo.

I apologize, verlo.

We got one of those mattresses in a box where you have to open it up and just let it open.

Oh yeah, right.

Very odd.

But we got a king-size mattress and I'm so happy.

Same, listen, Greg, or Dom.

Either one of you guys, you come

to Marinette sometime when the weather gets a little better.

Try out the verlo, take a nap, let me know what you think.

Just wear underpants.

Other than that, I think it's

a great

mattress.

I'm out.

Me and Dom will get in the car and we will take a trip to Holiday Hanukkah Christmas Town USA.

And

listen, it might be Jason chef town now after that concert the other

night.

Oh, that's right.

We need to talk about that as well.

All right.

Well, my gosh, there's so much to discuss before we do anything else.

I Oh, look at everything.

Everything coming through here on the tie.

Love it.

The text line is lighting up.

And folks, if you do spell it incorrectly, we'll let you know.

We won't be mean.

We'll just let you know because we want you to get entered into the contest.

I see Luanne, Charles Scott, Susan, Ron, getting at it.

Get in there.

The word is queen text in the word queen on your civic.

the app be part of the Break into Spring multi-state text-to-win contest.

All right.

Do we or do we not have a question for the night, Pete?

We do have a question of the night, and we'll have to just kind of decipher all these great texts coming in from

our

Break into Spring multi-text contest, but we could do that.

So let's do the question of the night,

Tom.

Let's talk about the question.

Okay, question.

Question.

Pregunta.

Question.

Okay, I have a question.

Questions.

This question.

Domanda.

Question.

Questions.

All right, what is a TV show you've been meaning to binge watch, but haven't yet?

What is a TV show you've been meaning to binge watch, but haven't yet?

855-752-4842, 855-757.

You can text us on the text line.

You can text us on the app, which you need anyway to play the contest.

So check

that out if

you don't already have it.

And if you are watching the radio and looking at my glorious background on YouTube, Facebook, or X Twitter, you can drop us a stream comment.

Get ahold of us anyway you can, folks.

But get ahold of us because it's more fun when you guys participate.

Kasper on the text line says, I've got a California king because tall.

What's interesting about a California king, though, is that a California king is wider and shorter.

So like a king size bed is 80 by 76 and a california king is 84 wide by 72 long Are you

sure that's not wow flip-flop?

I always thought a california king was a little narrower, but longer

I'm looking at it right now.

I'm looking at the difference is 80 cat king 80 long 76 wide california king 84 wide 72 long So

so he could sleep the other way.

Mm-hmm covered because Chris is a tall guy.

He's

a tall chap

He's a tall, he's a redwood of a man.

Did you know he was a great athlete too?

I did not know that.

He was like a track guy and I assume he could dunk because he's like seven feet three.

That

makes sense.

He's a, he's a, he's a, he's a giant dude.

He's like, I'm tall.

And when I see him like, hello up there.

So yeah.

All right.

Well, that's okay.

So we got the, we got the question.

What's a show that you've been wanting to binge, but haven't yet?

I gotta think.

I have a couple.

A couple.

Same.

A two.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

All right.

But let's, uh, in the time we have left, let's get back to some things.

The first big story.

All right.

So as I mentioned, you know, if you look at the map of the state, and I know our, uh, Civic Media colleague Corey, uh, posted this, uh, map, we got hit the worst.

I think Wausau might have, we were right there with Wausau and maybe another town in the, in the UP.

But here's, here's what my thinking was.

I took a group to the concert to see Jason Chef, former Chicago lead singer, who was on the show, got to introduce him.

He said, they knew the weather was coming.

And the facility said, we'll give you a ride back to Chicago.

They hired a car.

He goes, no, no, no, we're taking our own cars and we're driving 90 miles an hour to beat the weather.

So I thought, well, this will be great.

We'll have a concert.

Then we get hold up.

We made all these plans because we knew we were getting bad weather.

And it, I could not, we decided to stay at our house the first night, knowing it could get bad.

I woke up at seven in the morning and it said, life expectancy threat urgent.

So I'm waking my wife and my daughter.

The wind was coming, the snow was coming and I was surprised we hadn't lost power already because that's kind of what our house does.

So we got over to this place and I was all set.

They have a huge generator.

We're all set.

And then the power still, no, spectrum went over there.

So we were holed up, we got out a little bit.

But you guys, you should have seen the trees.

They were like, you don't want to be outside because the weather was so angry and downright rude, frankly.

But it was horrible.

And then so I'm lucky I found this place to do the show because I thought I was going to be out of luck.

But it was, you know, I guess snow plows were going off the road and it's there's no streets where I live that have been plowed other than a few main thoroughfares.

It's insanity.

I've never seen anything like it.

Well, and the thing that.

I don't ever want to look I understand that being especially in the situation of a snowstorm your job as a play, you know We're especially what you work with the city It's not easy and everyone wants everything right now and they want it perfectly and they want it right now And they want it done yesterday and they want it done right now and I get that but we've known about these storms for a while and when I see like

Down here in Kenosha, there is always like, you know, there's the one main thoroughfare that's good and then everything else is junk.

And you're like, well, I mean, I mean, the thing is, like by the end of the week, most of that snow will be melted down here at least because we're supposed to be in the fifties and sixties by the weekend, which by the way, going to Arizona this weekend, it's going to be 105.

Oh, God.

They only got a couple inches of snow down there.

You should be okay, but

in Arizona and Kenosha.

Arizona.

Um.

No, but shout out, I want to give a shout out.

Adam Grace, my parents' neighbor came over with a snow blower and

did like

three feet of snow in their driveway.

So I got my Land Cruiser out.

My Land Cruiser is plowing around my little roads because I live in this small community.

Yeah.

But to get to a house.

It's not going to go through a seven foot drift.

So it's like, I'm getting around okay.

We checked to see if anybody needed help, whatever.

Everybody's just inside.

It was great.

But if he hadn't done that, I probably would not have been here because I couldn't carry radio equipment on foot like three quarters of a mile.

It just wouldn't work.

Well, I'm glad.

Excuse me.

I'm glad you are here today.

I'm glad you are safe.

I'm glad that you thank you for looking out for people around your community.

And folks, you know, it's going to still be cold.

I think we're still going to get some more snow this week.

So keep it close, locked here on Civic Media for all your weather updates.

When we come back, we talk about more of the things on the big things list.

Also, the word queen text in the word queen via the Civic Media app, Q U E E N. You were listening to Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach here on the Civic Media Network.

Stay tuned.

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close.

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Welcome back.

This is Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.

It is great to have you with us on this Monday night.

We are talking, we're in the middle of our three big things that we do every show in the first couple segments.

And we've got text to win that Greg just told you all about.

We'll give you the keyword again in a few minutes.

Very exciting.

It's our break into spring multi-state text to win contest.

Boom.

Nice.

Nicely done.

Working without a nest tonight, folks.

That's exciting.

So good luck, everybody, on that.

And we are in the middle of our three big stories of the day.

Dom, I believe we're ready for number two.

The second

big

story.

So did you hear about this whole Iran thing?

There's a whole Iran thing going on here.

What?

That's my bad Jerry Seinfeld slash terrible comedian voice.

What is the deal with that?

Do you guys hear about Iran?

So right now it seems like, so in the Wall Street Journal, there's a story that came out.

I mean, there, I mean, this is not just the Wall Street Journal.

This is all over.

I heard it on civic media, like the local news portion talking about this as well in the CBS news.

They're trying to, you know, open the Strait of Hormuz, where the oil is coming out, which usually comes out of Iran, is then shipped to various parts of the world.

And it has essentially been closed by the Iranian government.

And the president is doing his best, most diplomatic ways of saying, help us, not saying, could you please help us?

Would you please help us?

Saying things like, quote, the US doesn't need help or.

They will, I expect them to help us.

It's really just a masterclass in diplomacy, Pete.

It's insanity.

It's like, you have to help us, China, France, Japan, South Korea, UK, or gas prices are gonna stay high.

Well, yeah, because of us.

Like, it's just, this is an odd thing.

It's like, again, it seems like there was just no plan.

Or Greg, I suspect they didn't think it would last this long.

or that Iran would, you know, throw up their hands, but they're not doing that.

So I don't, how do you respond?

if you're one of these countries that some people are saying he's trying to bully into helping us and some people are saying he demand help us.

You say you do what France says and they say go kick rocks.

They said no, we're not going to help you and I imagine they're not going to help them in this form.

And the thing is he's not saying anything that's helping either.

He's like the US doesn't know who's in charge of Iran.

I don't know.

I just looked it up on Wikipedia.

It's right there.

You can see it for yourself.

He said they're a paper tiger.

That's right.

Poke at the people who have our

And also the people that you say are a huge threat and then to say something they don't have too many missiles left What a beautiful

statement, you know, I thought they were all gone after the last go around and now we've got energy prices going up to Astronomically, I think it's you know with the data centers and the war and you know tariffs So it's just this is really I hope something gets done about this quickly because everybody is being affected by this Greg

I mean, I just remember something, folks.

This is an election year.

That's all I'll say.

It's an election year.

We go to the polls next month and in fall.

Remember that.

Remember who supports what?

Just saying we're voting for new governor too.

I hope there is an election because gas prices are so high, Greg.

So we might not have to have elections.

All right.

We're ready for our next big story.

The third big story.

I was like, Oh my God.

Did you watch it?

Greg?

Did you watch the Oscars?

I watched some of it.

I went to bed at a certain point because it just is a very long show.

Uh, yeah, I got what I needed.

I saw great Conan stuff.

The cold open was great.

The monologue was really good.

I thought

it was

very funny because last year during the fire, there was so much more.

I don't want to say like.

Unity but like it felt like there was more levity in that room because of what was going on But last night he was doing great jokes and once again a Hollywood crowd trying so hard to laugh at themselves but failing miserably Do

you think see here's what I don't understand because I agree here's my let's just sticking with the broadcast I thought overall the comedy was terrible

when the presenters will come out and they do some shtick.

They're not comedians.

I don't

expect it

to be great, but always a tedious at times.

And even Conan, who I thought crushed it last year and crushed the monologue this year,

was just not great.

I don't know what it was.

And those jokes in the monologue, I totally agree with you.

We're outstanding.

But that room, I think what I've heard anyway, I've been snubbed now by the Oscars for 30 years.

There's so much everyone's nervous.

They're just

they're around peers and you think Timothy Shalloway's a big shot.

Oh, he's sitting next to Steven Spielberg So he's on it like it's just that kind of energy because those were outstanding jokes.

I don't think he got the Hosanna he should have for those jokes, but Yeah, I thought the comedy overall just do just get rid of it have a funny monologue

But if

those are the bits and my son even said are they're just nepo babies as writers now that are writing those jokes because they were

God awful.

Overall,

I thought it was great

though.

I don't know who writes the jokes for the actors.

I mean, Conan's team, I know two of the writers on his team for that.

They're not writing bad jokes.

They're going to be delivered poorly, or they're hiring other people to write jokes for those actors.

I don't know.

That's something, I mean, honestly, I could text someone right now and find out.

I'm not sure.

That's a very good question.

I would

be really curious about that because they were not the same.

The monologue jokes were written by professionals.

Those were great jokes.

Yeah, the other stuff I didn't like.

But I love that, you know, I love that.

One battle after another.

I was happy with that.

I thought Sinners might win, but they got some love to Frankenstein surprise with three Oscars.

There was a tie, Sean Penn won, and he wasn't even there.

That was

very surprising.

Oh, Kieran Culkin's response was, he's not here, or he just doesn't want to be.

That's great.

You can all accept this for him, yeah.

Sinners won four out of 16.

I kind of, I was surprised they didn't win Best Song.

I'm really surprised.

Delroy Lindo, that didn't surprise me.

I wanted him to win, but it didn't surprise me.

It surprised me that Sean Penn won, but I was really surprised that Rafael Sadiq and they didn't win for that song.

I'm with you both times.

I thought Sean Penn gave a better performance than Delroy Lindo, even though I was kind of rooting for Delroy Lindo, but the part was different.

Sean Penn took chances and it could have backfired, but it didn't.

I don't know.

He's just a weird guy, though, too.

The fact that he showed up didn't surprise me.

All right, we are coming right back, folks.

We're going to do the news, and then we will be back with Michael Paulson, who's going to tell us all about the eight... Dr. Keith Paulson.

Dr. Keith Paulson.

I'm sorry.

I should have gave you that one, Greg.

We're coming right back, because Nightlight with Beachwabba and Greg Bach on the Civic Media Network.

Welcome back to Nightlight with Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach here on the Civic Media Network.

You are listening to us live and in charge, whether you're listening on the radio, watching on the live stream.

We're currently streaming on Facebook, YouTube, with the platform we still call Twitter, or on the Civic Media app, which by the way, you can listen to us on the app and also participate in the break into spring.

Text to win multi-state contest right now going on this hour.

The keyword is Queen Q-U-E-E-N.

Text it in right now.

Spelling matters.

Capitalization does not, but text the word Queen Q U E E N in via the Civic Media app.

It's the only way you can participate.

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So get yourself the Civic Media app.

Now participate, listen, get your news, have fun with it.

It's great.

It's out.

absolutely free.

All right.

In the second hour we do we will be welcoming comedian Mary Mack to the show but right now let us bring on to the program our first guest of the of the evening.

He is the director of the veterinary diagnostic lab and is a clinical professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Wisconsin Madison got that all out in one breath.

Dr. Keith Polson is with us.

He is

not just a doctor and a professor, but he's also a good neighbor because before we got on the air, we were talking about the fact that you were helping your dad shovel and then on the way here, on the way back to your house to be on the interview, you had to help someone, or you didn't have to, you helped someone get out of a ditch because that's what we do here in Wisconsin.

Absolutely.

I mean, you got to use the tow chain when you have it, right?

Oh, use the tow chain?

had to, yeah.

my gosh.

You're so cool.

I've only ever pushed, and a toe chain with that beard, you are already at astronomical coolness.

That's fantastic, Doctor.

I will say this.

Dr. Polson is definitely a reason you want to watch the live stream.

That's a good look.

I'm liking the look.

But we asked you.

It's

my wife here.

We'll write a handy note.

We wanted to talk to you, though.

It's a serious situation.

We saw this in Wisconsin Public Radio website, and we've seen other things coming through.

Bird flu is back, and it has been hitting the poultry farms in Wisconsin.

Can you give us?

Dr. Polson, just kind of a brief overview of bird flu as far as like, not just what it is, but the fact that, you know, in this story, it says, we've seen this before and it's been not too long ago when we were dealing with bird flu like a year and a half ago.

So not to quote Jerry Seinfeld, but what's the deal?

Right.

You know, so the, our, the lab, the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Lab, WVDL, we have two locations, Barron and Madison,

And we're part of what we call the National Animal Health Laboratory Network, which is a network of 66 labs across the country.

And we've actually been activated to fight this outbreak of bird flu since 2022.

So while it gets hot during the migration seasons, we've been dealing with this in one shape, manner or form since 2022.

really on the heels of COVID.

But this particular strain, the reason why we are continually seeing this is because what we call the reservoir or where the source of infection is in our migratory wild bird population.

And anyone out there, even today, are seeing the Canada geese or the coots.

I saw some coots and some ponds on my drive today.

This particular strain of flu

what we call highly pathogenic avian influenza, hasn't really affected the waterfowl.

They've adapted to it.

But as they move throughout the, and you know, we're in the Mississippi flyaway,

whether it's the west coast, the east coast, or the Mississippi flyway, twice a year they come through.

Then they co-mingle down by Patagonia and Antarctica, and then they co-mingle back up in the Arctic Circle, and then they mix with all the other birds from around the world.

So that's how this virus kind of moves around the global flyway.

And so why is it still sticking around?

That's a really good question.

that we don't really have the answer to because it tends to be sporadic about how severe it is.

But it certainly last fall, we got hit pretty hard the spring before.

And then now this spring has been very challenging.

I read in the Wisconsin examiner that there were three recent cases in southern Wisconsin, isolated cases.

What does that mean exactly?

Like, does that mean it's been neutralized effectively?

Or are we panicking that it's bad?

like you just said, what's the concern level there that it's three?

Is that manageable or is that just a sign of worse things to come?

That's really hard to predict.

We do know that when birds are affected and we've been working with the Egg Producers Foundation and the farm owners about they have very good biosecurity and

So how are they continually being reinfected?

Because one of the farms had just repopulated from being affected late last fall.

And it's very frustrating.

It's hard to keep a business model rolling that way.

And how is it specifically getting in?

And they're finding more and more, but we know that this virus has been in most of our major waterways and watersheds now.

It's a predominant virus now for a couple of years.

when we go through we know that it's there in the environment and how and when domestic poultry gets affected because they're very very sensitive to it and what happens when we see like some of these farms are a million birds or multiple million birds what we'll see is you'll start seeing 10 20% die off overnight and then those flocks are depopulated which means that we have to humanely or destroy those birds because a

we don't want those birds to die from disease alone and and B we need to stop viral spread because they're shedding lots and lots of virus so we try to contain it as much as possible and we've seen now since 2022 since we've been activated this is the worst foreign animal disease in US history yet we still don't really have a good handle on it and I'm sure we'll probably get into this over the half hour but

you know we don't have great tools to to really either prevent it and or manage it because we don't have a treatment.

There are vaccines out there but they're not licensed for use by the USDA which is a whole nother topic we could get into but you know being in the southeast we've had years where we've only had Mississippi Flyway and Northwest Wisconsin or I mean closer to the river

And that dealt mainly with our turkey population because there's a huge turkey industry in that area.

But this year seems to be more laying hens in Wisconsin and then certainly turkeys in Minnesota and South Dakota and then a lot of laying hens in Iowa and Indiana and Pennsylvania.

Is something of clarification because it was actually that was going to be my next question, but you answered it when.

You know, Pete mentioned there were three cases.

When they say cases, is a case a location or is a case like one bird?

And when you say they have to be exterminated or term, or I don't know what the technical term is.

Yeah.

Are we talking about the entire population of that group or is it just like a certain, so if I own a farm and we find bird flu, I have to just

knock out everything and start fresh.

Yeah so here's how it works on a poultry farm which is very different than dairy and we did see a dairy farm in Wisconsin but in poultry what happens is is that

The poultry industry has been dealing with this now for multiple years and it's not the first time that they've dealt with it.

The last outbreak we had before 2022 to 2026 was actually 2015 and that was the first very kind of large scale we've had in quite a while.

But what happens is you see a very large mortality and when you're dealing with large populations of birds you're going to have

some mortality on a regular basis.

We try and keep that as low as possible.

But like I said, you're going to see 20, 30%.

And we don't really look at one bird.

We look at the entire premise.

And that's so that entire farm, we call it a premise.

And the reason why is it's actually a premises.

A premise is something in your mind, right?

But on a premises,

Every premises has an ID.

So we have a premises ID.

So we consider that farm as a premise and with that ID and that location helps us manage it kind of using GIS or.

geographical information systems to be able to control outbreaks.

So in that premises, once identified, so they'll either take a dead bird or a swab and they'll send it to our lab in Madison, where the only lab in the state that can run that as part of the National Animal Health Laboratory Network.

But once it becomes what we call non-negative or a detection, we actually send split samples and one will go to either

lab in Plum Island, New York, which is moving to Manhattan, Kansas, or to the National Veterinary Services Lab in Ames.

And then when we see additional farms, our lab can call it with the state animal health official, who's Dr. Darlene Conkel, our state veterinarian.

So once we have a positive, we know that

on these positive or an affected premises, we're going to see upwards of 100 percent mortality anyway.

That's why the birds are what we call depopulated or humanely destroyed.

So that is, and it's a big part of trade too, is that we have to stomp out the disease on the premises.

It doesn't really make a lot of logical sense because we know it's in the environment, but there's a whole lot of levels of economic trade and politics.

along with animal health.

The animal health side is actually probably the easier side.

It's dealing with the politics, multiple different import and export markets, and then the economics that go behind it.

Our guest is Dr. Keith Poulson.

He is the director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.

He's also got a PhD, not too shabby, doctor.

It's great to have you here.

I wanted to ask you about vaccines.

Um, I know some countries are, you know, using vaccines.

We are not here in America.

Why is that?

Is it a cost factor or is it too difficult time consuming?

What are our reasons for that?

Yeah, there's a couple different reasons why we don't have a use of vaccine right now.

There are multiple, um, what we call USDA licensed vaccines.

And what that means is that so whether it's Bollinger or Zoetis, um, we may have

a vaccine that USDA has gone through what we call safety testing.

And with that safety testing, when they license it, that means that it could be used if they decide to approve it, then USDA

will say if and when they decide to use a vaccine, then it goes to the states.

And then the states have to approve it.

And when we think about it, each state has a different ag economy.

They have a different set of politics, a different culture.

And so with 48 different continuous states, it gets to be pretty complicated.

So there's a lot of different things moving in that direction.

And we could probably maybe continue after I think a break coming up.

Yeah.

We are talking to Dr. Keith Polson here.

If you have any questions, feel free to text them in on the Civic Media app or on your phone.

Give us a call.

Let us know.

I have some questions as well.

I mean, this is a, I feel like, you know, this is just, this is a topic that affects everybody and it, it fuels conversations for.

for politics.

We won't get political, but I do have a question about that on the other side if we can get to it.

But we'll be, we'll be continuing that conversation with Dr. Keith Polson here on Night Light with Pete Schwabba and Greg Box.

So don't go anywhere.

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