Bird flu's grisly question: how to kill millions of poultry
OMAHA, NEB. >> The spread of a bird flu that is deadly to poultry raises the grisly question of how farms manage to quickly kill and dispose of millions of chickens and turkeys.
It's a chore that farms across the country are increasingly facing as the number of poultry killed in the past two months has climbed to more than 24 million, with outbreaks reported nearly every day. Some farms have had to kill more than 5 million chickens at a single site with a goal of destroying the birds within 24 hours to limit the spread of the disease and prevent animals from suffering.
The outbreak is the biggest since 2015, when producers had to kill more than 50 million birds. So far this year, there have been cases in 24 states.
Farms faced with the need to kill so many birds turn to recommendations by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Even as it has developed methods to kill the poultry quickly, the association acknowledges its techniques “may not guarantee that the deaths the animals face are painless and distress free.”
One of the preferred methods is to spray water-based firefighting foam over birds as they roam around the ground inside a barn. That foam kills the animals by cutting off their air supply. When foam won't work because birds are in cages above the ground or it's too cold, the USDA recommends sealing up barns and piping carbon dioxide inside, rendering the birds unconscious and ultimately killing them.
If one those methods won't work because equipment or workers aren't available, or when the size of a flock is too large, the association said a last resort is called ventilation shutdown. In that scenario, farmers stop airflow into barns., which raises temperatures to levels at which the animals die.
“We have to do better,” said Sara Shields, director of farm animal welfare science at Humane Society International.