Bird flu has been spreading for more than two months on a mink fur farm west of Provo, Utah. Yet health officials are not checking on the workers who handle the sick animals every day. The Utah Department of Health and Human Services and the Utah County Health Department need to start monitoring and testing these workers now.

Guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urges officials to watch people exposed to infected animals for symptoms. Utah has chosen not to, a ProPublica investigation found. Under a 2025 deal with the state agriculture department, health officials agreed not to track farmworkers’ health unless the virus starts passing from person to person.

Red eye is one of the clearest signs of bird flu in people. It shows up in more than 90% of human cases, and often it’s the only symptom. The CDC specifically calls for testing when it appears. When a reporter met a worker from the farm with a red eye, the county health department was contacted but did not recommend a test. The farm’s owner said the worker had gotten dust in his eye, and the redness was gone two days later.

Mink bite and scratch, and their airways are strikingly similar to human airways. Experts warn the virus could change inside them in ways that let it infect people more easily. An unusually early flu season adds another danger: bird flu mixing with human flu.

“If you’re not looking for something, you won’t find it,” Erin Sorrell of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told ProPublica.

In 2020, when COVID-19 hit mink farms in Utah, including this one, farmworkers were tested often. They deserve the same protection now, and so do their families and neighbors. Testing the people most exposed is the fastest way to catch a spillover before it spreads.

Sign the petition to tell Utah health officials to monitor and test exposed mink farmworkers now, before flu season gives this virus its opening.