Maryland is planning to begin milk testing for bird flu by January, on par with a recent announcement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s national milk testing strategy to monitor any aviation influenza outbreaks, state officials said.

The state is coordinating its testing strategy with the USDA and grade A milk processors in Maryland, State Veterinarian Jennifer Trout said. Trout said there is a multistage process for the national milk testing strategy.

The first stage is for the state dairy regulator to sample raw milk at processing plants before it is pasteurized at least four times within six months. If those tests come back negative, states can move to the second stage, which is to sample milk from tanker trucks, or go to stage four, which is to develop a frequency of milk testing and monitor test results within your state.

If the test results from stage one come back positive, states have to move to stage three, which is providing epidemiological information for contact tracing and disease surveillance, the USDA said in a news release. States can decide whether to start at stage one or two and, according to Trout, Maryland hopes to start at stage two by January to fast-track to stage four.

“We want to make sure that we can protect our poultry producers and operations, and we can protect our dairy operations and, hopefully, avoid any type of an outbreak here,” Trout said.

The state has been conducting routine testing on individual animals based on an April federal order that requires testing cattle before moving them between states. The most recent data shows there are 310 farms throughout Maryland that are home to over 40,000 dairy cows.

Bird flu in Maryland was last detected in February in a Charles County backyard flock, which had been depopulated, and other birds from that flock were prevented from entering the food system, the state Department of Agriculture said.

Bird flu in poultry and dairy cows is being spread by wild birds. There have been nearly 60 reported human cases of bird flu in the United States — though none in Maryland — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although the CDC ranks the current public health risk of bird flu as low, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack insists national milk testing “will give farmers and farmworkers better confidence in the safety of their animals and ability to protect themselves, and it will put us on a path to quickly controlling and stopping the virus’ spread nationwide,” he said in a news release.