From: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/05/15/nebraska-declares-state-emergency-in-bird-flu-outbreak/
Government officials were working closely with the nation’s poultry industry Friday to contain the worst outbreak of bird flu on record, one that already has prompted the governors of four states to declare emergencies and led to the culling of 33 million birds in 16 states.
Nebraska became the latest state to declare an emergency amid the outbreak, which has seen three deadly strains of avian influenza have hit North America since December. That action by Gov. Pete Ricketts followed similar moves in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. With the spread of infection picking up speed in recent weeks, the battle to stem the crisis has become an all-hands-on-deck situation.
_____________________________________
Also see, from: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/business/bird-flu-outbreak-chicken-farmers.html?emc=eta1&_r=1
Deadly avian flu viruses have affected more than 33 million turkeys, chickens and ducks in more than a dozen states since December. The toll at Center Fresh farms alone accounts for nearly 17 percent of the nation’s poultry that has either been killed by bird flu or is being euthanized to prevent its spread.
While farmers in Asia and elsewhere have had to grapple with avian flu epidemics, no farmers in the United States have ever confronted a health crisis among livestock like this one, which seemed to travel along migratory bird pathways from the Pacific Northwest to the Midwestern states. Almost every day brings confirmation by the Agriculture Department that at least another hundred thousand or so birds must be destroyed; some days, the number exceeds several million.
On Thursday, South Dakota reported its first possible infection on a chicken farm with 1.3 million birds in the eastern part of the state.
Mounds and mounds of carcasses have piled up in vast barns here in the northwestern corner of Iowa, where farmers and officials have been appealing for help to deal with disposal of such a vast number of flocks. Workers wearing masks and protective gear have scrambled to clear the barns, but it is a painstaking process. In these close-knit towns that include many descendants of the area’s original Dutch settlers, some farmers have resorted to burying dead birds in hurriedly dug trenches on their own land, while officials weighed using landfills and mobile incinerators.
Iowa, where one in every five eggs consumed in the country is laid, has been the hardest hit: More than 40 percent of its egg-laying hens are dead or dying. Many are in this region, where barns house up to half a million birds in cages stacked to the rafters. The high density of these egg farms helps to explain why the flu, which can kill 90 percent or more of a flock within 48 hours, is decimating more birds in Iowa than in other states.
Exposing the Big Game 
I want to say “just stop” — stop contributing to this wretched industry. I know we have to do our part, however large or small. In all of these articles, the word they use is “euthanize.” I’ve left more than one comment at media outlets, telling them to stop this inaccurate use of a word that means, from its Greek origin, “good” or “easy” death. In no way is suffocation by firefighting foam easy, nor does constitute euthanasia. Semantics are more than important. It’s obviously how we’re desensitized to begin with.
Yes, society is becoming more and more desensitized to this and so many other issues that need to STOP!
It sounds better to the public. 😦
Ugh. This reminds me of the Mad Cow epidemic when so many animals had to be destroyed. It’s nightmarish, and shows how unsustainable such mass production of living things is. I honestly don’t know how they have managed at all, even before this. I hope they won’t continue to blame it on wild birds, nobody believes that. Raising extremely large numbers of animals under factory farm conditions has to be the culprit.
Even if it has come from an outside source, workers carrying it in unknowingly (as hard as that is to believe!), the factory farm environment would allow it to spread like wildfire. So, the problem is the method of raising animals.
Yep, but it more than likely originated in factory farm situations in most cases.
So I feel bad for the birds.