Bird f lu outbreak nears worst ever in the US; 37M fowl dead
Industry trends for larger barns will not help the situation
A bird flu virus sweeping across the U.S. is rapidly becoming the country’s worst outbreak, having already killed over 37 million chickens and turkeys, and with more deaths expected through next month as farmers undertake mass culls across the Midwest.
Under guidance from the federal government, if just one bird tests positive for the virus, farms must destroy entire commercial flocks. That’s leading to distressing scenes across America. In Iowa, millions of animals are suffocated at high temperatures in vast barns, or with poisonous foam. In Wisconsin, lines of dump trucks have taken days to collect masses of bird carcasses and pile them in unused fields where neighbors live with the stench of the decaying birds.
The crisis is hurting egglaying hens and turkeys the most, with the disease propogated largely by migrating wild birds that swarm above farms and leave droppings that are tracked into poultry houses. That’s probably how the virus contaminated egg operations in Iowa, which produce liquid and powdered eggs for restaurants or boxed cake mixes. Further north under the same migration paths lie Minnesota’s turkey farms, which supply everything from deli meats for sandwiches to whole birds for the holidays.
Prices for such products are soaring to record highs, adding to the fastest pace of U.S. inflation in four decades. The supply deficits triggered by the flu also come as world food prices reach new highs. From the war in Ukraine to adverse weather for crops, supply chains are in turmoil, compounding the crisis that’s pushed millions of people into hunger since the start of the pandemic.
“Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, here comes the bird flu,” said Karyn Rispoli, an egg market reporter at commodity researcher Urner Barry.
Wholesale egg prices touched a record $2.90 a dozen in April according to government data and whole turkeys were at an all-time high of $1.47 a pound according to Urner Barry.
The last time bird flu hit the U.S. in 2015, about 50 million animals were dead by the end of the season and the cost to the federal government was over $1 billion as it handled killing and burying the birds. At the time, the industry beefed up biosecurity around poultry houses, installing sound cannons to repel wild birds or even carwashes so that farm trucks wouldn’t carry contamination from one farm to another.
This time, even with that better biosecurity, the industry has failed to prevent transmission from wild birds, said Michelle Kromm, an executive consultant for the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association. Farmers are supposed to completely change their clothing and shoes before entering barns, and make sure all supplies and tools are clean.
But weather and migration patterns are making it easier for the virus to win this year. Rare spring snowstorms from the Midwest are travelling up the East Coast, and the cold, wet weather keeps the virus alive for longer. The flu this year is also more lethal than in the past. The deaths so far this season are tracking above previous outbreaks, at 37 million chickens and turkeys. The U.S. flock of egg-laying hens totals more than 300 million birds (chickens raised for meat, known as broilers, haven’t been as affected).
“We all need to maintain really high awareness that the environment is contaminated,” said Beth Thompson, a veterinarian at the Minnesota Board of Animal Health. The weather “needs to warm up and dry out to kill that virus.”
Iowa, the center of U.S. egg production, has been hit the worst. Rembrandt Enterprises farm destroyed its giant flock of 5.3 million hens starting in late March using a governmentapproved, yet controversial, method called ventilation shutdown plus. The technique, used widely to eliminate millions of chickens at a time, involves closing barns so that temperatures rise and the animals suffocate over hours. Turkeys can be killed by spraying a firefighting foam that suffocates them.
Bird flu is also wreaking havoc in Canada, wiping out almost two million fowl. “We’re worried for sure,” said Lisa Bishop-Spencer, spokeswoman for Chicken Farmers of Canada.
One person involved in culling infected birds in Colorado has contracted avian flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The risk of the bird flu spreading to humans remains low, the agency said, but flus that spread from animals to humans are a concern because, in rare instances, the result can be a pandemic.
It won’t be easy to recover from the crisis. In 2015, it took the egg industry over a year to ramp back up, according to Maro IbarburuBlanc, a research scientist at Iowa State University’s Egg Industry Center. This time, supplies could be hit for longer because affected farmers may transition to cage-free production, a longterm trend in the industry, said Mark Jordan, a poultry analyst with LEAP Market Analytics.
Massive outbreaks may continue to plague the U.S. poultry industry as long as bigger bird barns stay in vogue. And the trend is toward bigger: “We continue to see consolidation of facilities and new facilities … for several million birds,” said John Brunnquell, chief executive officer of Egg Innovations.