Bird flu outbreak nears worst ever with 37 million dead

Bloomberg News

A bird flu virus that’s 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 perform mass culls across the Midwest.

Under guidance of the federal government, farms must destroy entire commercial flocks if just one bird tests positive for the virus, to stop the spread. That’s leading to distressing scenes across rural America. In Iowa, millions of animals in vast barns are suffocated in high temperatures 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. Neighbors live with the stench of the decaying birds.

The crisis is hurting egglaying hens and turkeys the most, with the disease largely being propagated by migrating wild birds that swarm above farms and leave droppings that get tracked into poultry houses.

Wholesale egg prices touched a record $2.90 a dozen in April in government data. Whole turkeys touched an all-time high $1.47 a pound according to Urner Barry.

The last time bird flu hit the U.S. in 2015, it took the lives of about 50 million animals by the end of the season and cost the federal government over $1 billion dollars, as it handles killing and burying of birds. At the time, the industry beefed up its biosecurity around poultry houses, installing sound canons to repel wild birds, or even carwashes so that farm trucks wouldn’t bring contamination from one farm to another, so that there wouldn’t be a repeat.

This time around, even with that better biosecurity, the industry has failed to prevent the transmission from wild birds, said Michelle Kromm, an executive consultant for the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association. As a precaution, farmers are supposed to go through a process of changing their clothing and shoes before entering barns, and making sure all supplies and tools are clean.