In early July, a dairy farm worker in Colorado tested positive for H5N1, the current strain of avian flu that’s ripping through dairy cows. It marked the fourth human case contracted on a dairy farm; a worker tested positive in Texas in April, and then two others in Michigan. While the virus has yet to be found spreading among the general public, it’s clear that the dairy industry’s workforce is very much at risk of infection. And each time a new person gets sick, it’s a chance for the virus to mutate, allowing it to potentially spread beyond the agricultural workforce.

Yet there is effectively no federal agency with the power to mandate protections to keep more workers from getting sick. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has no authority to impose safety measures on farming operations unless it declares a public health emergency, which it isn’t likely to do unless the virus spreads widely. The U.S. Department of Agriculture only regulates the treatment of animals, not of workers.

The obvious federal body to tackle this problem is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is responsible for preventing American workers from getting sick or hurt on the job. But OSHA can’t touch nearly all dairy farms because of their small size.

OSHA’s lack of regulatory authority on smaller farms dates to 1976, when a rider was attached to an appropriations bill in Congress that barred the agency from using federal funds to enforce regulations on farms with ten or fewer employees. That leaves 96 percent of animal husbandry operations outside of OSHA oversight. (Poultry plants, where the virus is also infecting workers, typically have more employees and so are subject to OSHA’s regulation.)

“Historically there has been a real aversion politically to regulating farms,” said Patty Lovera, a policy adviser at the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment, a coalition that works against factory farming.

Without a federal mandate, dairy farm owners are being asked to voluntarily institute........

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