‘Catastrophe’ mounts amid concern virus is airborne
CHICAGO — Deadly bird flu swelled in the poultry industry in Minnesota and neighbouring Wisconsin amid speculation that winds may be carrying virus particles into facilities housing turkeys and chickens.
“This is a catastrophe for both the turkey and the egg industries,” William Rehm, the president of Daybreak Foods Inc., said after his company’s farm in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, with 800,000 hens was infected by bird flu. “Some USDA veterinarians are starting to believe the virus is spreading from particulates in the air,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday confirmed that avian influenza was found in 13 turkey flocks in Minnesota with at least 430,300 birds. Since late 2014, the virus has been detected in commercial and backyard flocks with a combined estimate of at least eight million birds, USDA data show. Migratory waterfowl along a Mississippi River flyway are believed by to be spreading the flu, agriculture officials say.
On a Minnesota visit, “there were 20 mile per hour winds, and you could see a lot of dust blowing,” John Clifford, the chief veterinary officer of the Washington-based USDA, said Wednesday on a media conference call. “So what we’re talking about is the wind carrying potentially feathers or dust or things that could be a carrier of the virus and moving it” to structures with poultry, he said.
Avian flu “is not generally an aerosolized virus, it’s not spread easily that way,” Clifford said. In Minnesota, the biggest U.S. turkey producer “because of the close proximity some of these facilities are to lakes and large populations of wild waterfowl,” high winds may be a carrier of the virus, he said.
The stricken Jefferson County site was quarantined, and remaining birds will be “depopulated,” according to a statement from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
A flock of 3.8 million egg-laying hens in Osceola County, Iowa, was reported with the flu this week, the largest U.S. commercial case this year.