The Canadian Food Inspection Agency will soon initiate a surveillance program to test for avian flu at poultry farms as a follow up to an outbreak at a turkey farm north of Winnipeg last fall.
Jag Dhanda, CFIA disease control specialist in Saskatoon, said the testing, known as post-outbreak surveillance, will begin when work is completed at the infected farm.
“We need to go and do surveillance throughout the poultry industry, taking samples and prove that this disease did not spread,” Dhanda said. “This will take place now for three months after the (clean and disinfect) is done.”
In late November, the CFIA announced that birds at a turkey farm in the Rural Municipality of Rockwood had tested positive for a low pathogenic strain of H5N2 avian flu. Consequently, CFIA and Manitoba government employees destroyed approximately 8,200 turkeys at the infected farm.
As part of its disease control protocols, the CFIA tested birds at farms of interest in Manitoba that had contact with the infected premise. They showed birds on those farms didn’t have avian flu.
“We’ve proved by going through all these traces in and trace outs that there was no disease spread at that time,” Dhanda said.
Nonetheless, to ensure that the H5N2 virus did not spread to other poultry operations, the CFIA has to test birds in other provinces, Dhanda added.
In the meantime, CFIA employees are also working on a final report to determine what happened at the turkey farm north of Winnipeg.
Although he didn’t reveal the contents of the report, Dhanda said it’s likely wild birds entered the barn and infected turkeys at the farm.
Biosecurity in Canada’s poultry industry is excellent, he added, but mistakes can happen.
“It’s not that the industry is not following the biosecurity (protocols),” he said. “The biosecurity in poultry is top notch. But sometimes there can be slips.”
The final report on the case north of Winnipeg is nearly complete, Dhanda said. The agency will post a summary of the report on its website in the near future.
