By the end of the day, avian flu had been discovered among some of those chickens. By the end of the week, four workers came down with the illness, which had infected only a handful of other people in the U.S. And after two more days of testing by the Benton Franklin Health District, another 10 workers at the farm tested positive.

A line of Holstein dairy cows feed through a fence at a dairy farm in Idaho in this 2009 file photo. The highly pathogenic avian influenza is spreading rapidly through dairies and poultry farms in the region, and health experts say states could be doing more to test workers — many of whom are migrants — in order to prevent the disease among humans.

Not so long ago, there were the first bird flu cases among cows confirmed in the United States, causing concerns about dairy and milk consumption. Earlier in September, there was the first case of a person from the United States testing positive for the virus,