Federal officials on Friday confirmed that a highly infectious avian-influenza virus struck an IN turkey farm, the first USA bird-flu case IN six months following a severe outbreak past year that roiled the nation’s egg and turkey industries.
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Huntingburg-based Farbest Farms said in a news release Friday that its surveillance protocol for bird flu quickly detected the H7N8 strain. The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said it was a strain of bird flu different from the one that caused the destruction of about 48 million birds a year ago.
The H7N8 strain identified in this new outbreak struck a Dubois County farm in Indiana.
Agriculture officials in Alabama said they are closely monitoring reports that a highly infectious avian-influenza virus has been confirmed at an in turkey farm. At the turkey farm, 60,000 birds were euthanized.
Almost 50 million birds were killed or destroyed after bird flu swept across the United States in 2015, infecting 211 commercial flocks in 15 U.S. states from California to Indiana. “With the outbreak previous year, we did quite a bit of epidemiological work”.
Anyone involved with poultry production, from the small backyard to the large commercial producer, should review their biosecurity activities to assure the health of their birds.
While there are bird flu vaccines for poultry, there is yet to be one for H7N8 in the USA, with officials stressing that flu viruses undergo wild mutations and every vaccine should be created fresh for every strain. The H7N8 virus has not yet been found in wild birds, suggesting that the virus could have developed in wild birds that spent the winter in southern Indiana, USDA spokeswoman Andrea McNally said, adding that it’s too early to speculate about the origin and its association with migratory birds.
Research has shown that wild birds’ northern migration introduced the H5N2 virus, which began to accelerate from farm to farm in the spring.
Indiana’s poultry industry ranks fourth nationally in turkey production, first in duck production, third in eggs, and is a significant producer of broiler chickens.
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Pence said he and multiple state agencies are taking the necessary “precautions to contain the situation and minimize the effects to Indiana’s robust poultry industry”.
