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On a recent Friday morning, Alyssa Laxamana arrived at a laboratory on the UC Davis campus to continue California’s race against bird flu. A note from her supervisor had alerted Laxamana that about 130 samples of cow milk and other dairy products were en route — a large but manageable workload. ... Laxamana’s plans, however, quickly went out the window. More samples kept popping up in a digital queue as another lab worker logged unexpected shipments. Around noon she had to draw a line. She calculated she could get through about 270 samples that day. The rest would have to wait. (Hussain, 12/1)

Since the start of the bird flu outbreak in U.S. cattle more than eight months ago, health authorities have reported 55 human cases of H5N1 viral infections, a startling number in a country that had previously reported only one. All, though, have been mild. The fact that none has been severe has been a shock, though a welcome one, certainly. (Branswell, 12/2)

New Zealand has halted all poultry exports after confirming its first case of bird flu on an egg farm in the southern region of Otago. Exports of poultry products worth about NZ$190 million ($112 million) a year will cease until New Zealand can once again attest to being free of bird flu, Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard said Monday in Wellington. (Brockett, 12/2)

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is investigating a case of Hepatitis A at a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in Monterey Park, the department announced Wednesday. Public health officials have told customers who visited the restaurant between Nov. 13 and Nov. 22 to get vaccinated for Hepatitis A, a liver infection caused by the highly contagious Hepatitis A virus. (Wenzke, 11/27)

A Fresno County woman died after being bitten by a rabid bat in the middle school classroom where she taught art, according to public health officials and published reports. The Fresno County Department of Public Health reported last week that a county resident had died from rabies after being bitten by a bat in Merced County. Health officials did not name the victim, but friends identified her as Leah Seneng, 60, an art teacher at Bryant Middle School in the small Merced County city of Dos Palos, according to reports in the Fresno Bee and KFSN-TV. (Ormseth, 12/1)

A farm that supplies organic, pasture-raised eggs for Costco has issued a recall for more than 10,000 products sent to 25 retail locations in five southern states. Handsome Brook Farms said the eggs, which were sold in packs of 24 under the label of Kirkland Signature, could be contaminated with salmonella. The recalled eggs were sent to Costco stores in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, the farm said. The affected products were sent beginning Nov. 22 and bear the UPC 9661910680, along with the code 327 and a “use by” date of Jan. 5, 2025 printed on the side. (Heil, 11/29)

An Arizona produce company is recalling all sizes of its whole, fresh American cucumbers in 26 states and parts of Canada because they could be contaminated with salmonella, it said. SunFed said in an announcement posted online Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration that cucumbers it sold from Oct. 12 to Nov. 26 were recalled because of the potential contamination, which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people and others with weakened immune systems. (Rudy, 11/29)

Nearly every family and friend group has someone with type 2 diabetes, auto-immune disease and/or cardiovascular disease. Though these conditions can have multiple causes, a new study suggests that RFK Jr. is right that one underlying trigger of all of them may be our diet. More precisely, what and how we're eating. In a study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Cell, biologist Richard Young shows that continuously eating too much added sugar causes traffic jams inside cells. And these traffic jams are what leads to many chronic diseases, Young thinks. (Weintraub, 11/27)

The meltdown started with a small thing — a bag of suckers. Rachel Damgen's four-year-old son wanted one. She said no. ... With their extended families far away in other states, she and her husband, Chris Damgen, began asking themselves if there was any way to reconfigure their lives in order to optimize for more support and community. The answer they found was cohousing. Today, the Damgens live in a 30-unit planned community called Daybreak Cohousing in Portland, Oregon. The couple says the move has been a game changer, both for their own mental health and for that of the entire family. (Riddle, 12/1)

Belgium made history on Sunday as the first country in the world to allow sex workers to sign formal employment contracts — granting them access to sick days, maternity pay and pension. The new law also guarantees fundamental rights for sex workers, including the ability to refuse clients, set the conditions of an act, and stop an act at any moment. Lawmakers passed the law in May but it officially took effect on Sunday. (Kim, 12/1)