Bird flu outbreak spreads to millions of Iowa hens

The bird flu sweeping through US poultry farms is starting to reach alarming levels after Iowa, the biggest US egg producer, said flocks housing as much as 16% of the state’s egg-laying chickens may be infected.

The roughly 9.5 million chickens in Iowa that confirmed positive for the virus or are presumed to have it brings the number of birds in infected flocks to more than 13 million nationwide, according to figures from the state and federal agriculture departments. About 30 cases of the disease have been confirmed in the US in just the past week, helping to make this the worst domestic outbreak in three decades.

“This is a big number,” Bill Northey, Iowa secretary of agriculture, said on a conference call with reporters on Monday. “Certainly, there is a lot of healthy, active birds out there still laying eggs, and we hope this doesn’t move beyond this. We don’t know what’s going to happen next. There is a big economic impact.”

US farms are stepping up clean-up efforts and Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton declared a state of emergency as poultry buyers from Europe to Asia to place restrictions on American shipments. At stake is the roughly $ 44 billion made from poultry and eggs produced in the US, the latest government figures show.

While the disease started popping up in wild birds and waterfowl in December along the Pacific Coast, the rate of reported cases has vastly accelerated since March as commercial flocks in the Midwest began to report infections. On Monday, Center Fresh Group said the disease was testing presumptive positive at two Sioux County, Iowa facilities with about 5.5 million birds, which were included in the total state count provided by the agriculture department. —