U.S. Department of Agriculture officials have arrived in the state where officials told Indiana Public Media that 245,000 commercial turkeys and 156,000 commercial chickens have been affected by the flu, also known as the H7N8 virus, in Dubois County, Indiana, northeast of Evansville.
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Experts don’t know where this new strain originated yet, though they suspect it mutated from a milder form into a more virulent version on one of the infected farms in Indiana.
“The low-path H7N8 virus was identified during testing in the 10-kilometer zone around the initial flu-positive flock”, in state veterinarian Bret Marsh said in a statement over the weekend. “We know this virus strain can intensify, so finding these cases as low-path strains shows we are keeping pace with the spread of this disease in the area”. In addition, avian influenza does not present a food safety risk. The birds typically are killed using a type of suffocating foam, though due to cold weather, officials in IN also have had to use carbon dioxide gas and a device that delivers a fatal head injury. All affected barns will then undergo a thorough cleaning and disinfection before farmers can restock.
A day later, however, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) said eight of those nine additional H7 detections were low-pathogenic H7N8 and that tests were ongoing on the ninth flock. But even after euthanizing hundreds of thousands of birds, farms are not yet in the clear. A USDA spokeswoman says the viral strain has not yet been found in wild birds, and that suggests it could have developed in wild birds that overwintered in southern Indiana. Last year’s H5N2 outbreak cost the poultry industry .3 billion, Reuters reported.
So far outbreaks have been reported in Dubois County only, but the surveillance area has now been expanded to include parts of Crawford, Davies, Martin, and Orange counties.
Officials hope the current outbreak has been contained and that there’s no wider impact.
USA farm and health officials are racing to assess the threat that a type of bird flu never before seen in the country poses to humans and poultry, employing emergency plans drawn up in the wake of a devastating outbreak in birds a year ago. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
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