Birds from nine more commercial turkey farms in IN have tested positive for bird flu, and officials were trying Saturday to determine the strain of the highly contagious virus.
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The nine farms are located in Dubois County, about 70 miles from Louisville, Kentucky. Purdue professor Surresh Mittal specializes in veterinary medicine and says there is no known cause of how the birds were infected.
Temperatures that dipped into the teens and single digits over the weekend stymied efforts to fill the affected poultry barns with the foam to a level just above the turkeys’ heads to suffocate them, said Denise Derrer of the Indiana State Board of Animal Health. This is not a situation that deserves chaos at this point, we’re handling it. The USDA has been prepared past year with the cases we’ve had to fight.
The farm in IN was quickly placed under quarantine and all 60,000 birds were culled within 29 hours. Sander said he lost about 23,000 birds to the avian flu outbreak that was discovered in the Dubois area last week. Research shows wild birds’ northern migration introduced the H5N2 strain starting last spring, but officials don’t know whether the fall and winter migration are to blame in Indiana.
As with other avian flu viruses, the CDC recommends antiviral medication for symptomatic people. “These birds are going to be depopulated as part of the requirement under worldwide trade agreements. and so that is kind of the protocol for this disease so it doesn’t move any farther”.
Bird flu has found its first victim since the end of last year’s outbreak, and it’s Indiana.
Birds infected with low-pathogenic avian influenza often have no symptoms or only minor signs of infection. Officials also are looking at whether workers traveling between farms, wind or other methods may have spread the H7N8 strain. This particular case is an H7N8 virus.
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The US Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service revealed on 15 January that the strain had been identified as H7N8 – different to the strains that led to the death of nearly 50 million chickens and turkeys in the first half of 2015. Importers also cut back on trade in the $5.7 billion poultry and egg export market, and some have already limited shipments because of this new outbreak.
