USDA officials faced challenges in disease containment and bird disposal and will improve compensation methods
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Indiana turkey farms devastated by avian influenza in January are just beginning to restock their barns.
The Indiana situation had the benefit of lessons learned from the exhaustive work done the previous year when 233 poultry operations in the United States were hit by H5N2, said Paul Brennan, executive director of the Indiana Poultry Producers Association.
The deadly virus resulted in the destruction of more than 400,000 turkeys. Fighting the outbreak on seven turkey farms and one laying operation required 12 agencies working together, he said at the National Institute of Animal Agriculture’s April 3-7 annual meeting in Kansas City.
Read Also
Manitoba Parkland research station grapples with dry year
Drought conditions in northwestern Manitoba have forced researchers at the Parkland Crop Diversification Foundation to terminate some projects and reseed others.
The Indiana State Police were enlisted to deliver samples by vehicles or air to laboratories for rapid testing and diagnosis.
About 300 low risk prisoners from the state’s corrections department were trained to help remove birds from barns. In return for their help, a scholarship fund has been set up to help them or their children enroll in school.
Killing birds humanely was difficult because of extreme cold and malfunctioning equipment.
Many of the carcasses were composted, and the compost was tested to make sure it was disease free before spread on fields.
Officials realized people, machinery and vehicles helped spread the virus, so the state is developing a partnership among various groups to implement better biosecurity planning.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service released a re-port in March advocating for better biosecurity. It also said the outbreak was linked to a low pathogenic form of the virus carried by wild fowl that mutated at a single farm and became the new and highly virulent form, H7N8.
Jack Shere, APHIS’s head veterinarian, said it is a tough virus to fight.
“Biosecurity is geared for domestic diseases, it is not geared for this virus,” he told the NIAA meeting.
The disease did not seem that serious when it was first detected on the West Coast in 2015, but then it struck with fury throughout the country.
“We spent a lot of time figuring out things as we went along,” he said.
The goal was to get rid of birds within 24 hours because the longer they lived, the more virus occurs and the harder it is to disinfect a site.
Different euthanasia methods were tried, but none worked perfectly. Some barns used a deadly foam, others tried carbon dioxide and as a last resort, barn ventilation was turned off.
The industry learned that 40 people are needed to remove 140,000 birds a day. The task seemed impossible in facilities with millions of birds.
Dead birds could be composted, but many places did not have the space to build compost piles. Some landfills opened up and some tried incinerating thousands of birds.
They had to figure out how to disinfect farms to make sure the virus was gone.
The government set up an in-demnity plan to respond to the losses. About $200 million was spent to cover the cost of lost birds and another $600 million was spent on recovery and clean up.
The program has been modified since it was first announced. Some of the industry is made up of growers who work under contract for larger companies.
In some cases, the companies took the money and left the growers with nothing. Future payments will be split between contractors and companies.
The state’s agriculture secretary also instructed the department to work with the poultry industry, state officials and universities to formulate a new plan to deal with this kind of crisis, including more education about biosecurity with a checklist of self assessment for producers.
The plan needs to eventually evolve into something more stringent.
