Medicine Hat bureau
This year’s national avian influenza outbreak has saved its worst impacts for the end of the year.
In British Columbia’s Fraser Valley, the outbreak has more than doubled the number of commercial poultry birds culled in the province since the highly contagious variant of the virus hit in spring.
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More than 2.8 million birds have been reported destroyed since the outbreak began last year, with more than half that total coming in the final months of 2022.
The latest numbers show B.C. is the hardest hit province in the country, doubling Alberta’s 1.4 million birds culled.
In the last two-and-a-half months of 2022, a total of 66 commercial poultry farms in the Fraser Valley have been identified as being infected.
Ontario has seen nearly 750,000 birds culled since the spring with Saskatchewan and Quebec 570,000 and 530,000 birds destroyed respectively.
Since late December 2021, every province except for P.E.I. has been affected by avian influenza with the national total of birds impacted standing at 6.4 million in the past 12 months across 280 premises.
