Bird Flu is Rapidly Spreading Through US Poultry Flocks
Farms that raise turkeys and chicken for eggs and meat are on high alert.
A strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu, is spreading across wild and commercial bird flocks in the US.
This week, the USDA confirmed the presence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in two non-commercial backyard flocks (less than 50 birds) in Connecticut and western Iowa. While it’s possible for the virus to spread to humans, no human cases have been reported.
The detection of the bird flu in Iowa is especially concerning, considering the state is home to the largest number of egg-laying hens in the US. The 2015 outbreak of the same pathogen resulted in the death and eradication of 50 million birds across 15 states, with 33 million hens killed in Iowa alone, costing the federal government nearly $1 billion. But because the Iowa flock in question was small and non-commercial, there aren’t yet any supply chain issues in the region, says the USDA.
New confirmed cases continue to pop up across the nation. The USDA reported the most recent confirmation of the pathogen in a flock of broiler chickens in Missouri today.
This recent avian flu outbreak stretches across the country, with the first confirmed case detected in Indiana on Feb. 9. Indiana’s outbreak, which started in commercial turkeys, resulted in the killing and removal of 171,000 birds. The spread continued to Kentucky, where 284,000 birds were killed. Delaware had to destroy 1.2 million birds after an infection was detected in a commercial chicken flock.
[RELATED: Bird Flu Is Back in the US]
The USDA reports that the cases of HPAI confirmed in Indiana are the first signs of the strain in commercial poultry in the US since 2020. However, a subtype of the HPAI virus known as H5N1, which was responsible for crushing the poultry industry in 2015, was detected in wild birds in North and South Carolina in late January of this year.
Recent avian flu cases in small, backyard flocks like the one in Iowa have also been found in states including Michigan, Maine, New York and Virginia.
According to the department, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is working closely with state officials to depopulate properties with infected birds—which will not enter the food system—to mitigate the spread. Officials are suggesting poultry farmers immediately report sick birds and tighten their biosecurity measures by limiting the contact of wild and commercial animals.
Despite the large number of cases detected across the nation, the USDA says there is no “immediate public health concern” and, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no human cases have been reported yet.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].Bird Flu is Rapidly Spreading Through US Poultry Flocks
by Shea Swenson, Modern Farmer
March 4, 2022
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
Let’s hope we can contain this. We can’t afford a hit on chicken and eggs right now. That goes for farmers and consumers.