SENDAI – The chicken cull sparked by the nation’s latest bird flu outbreaks fell short of the originally planned goal of 300,000 Sunday as authorities in Miyagi and Chiba prefectures opted to settle for roughly 209,000 and 62,000 chickens, respectively.
The two prefectures north of Tokyo were spurred into action by outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5 strain of bird flu at local poultry farms.
Agricultural officials in Chiba finished their cull on Saturday.
The Miyagi Prefectural Government will bury the carcasses underground and disinfect the poultry houses, officials said. It initially planned to kill 220,000 chickens but later reduced it by about 11,000.
The two culls began Friday, with help from Self-Defense Forces personnel.
Since November, the H5 virus has devastated poultry farms in Niigata, Aomori and Miyazaki prefectures as well as Hokkaido.
According to the Miyagi Prefectural Government, a total of 96 chickens were found dead over a three-day period through Thursday at a poultry farm in Kurihara. Six tested positive for bird flu in a preliminary screening.
In Chiba, 118 chickens were found dead over the same three-day period at a farm in Asahi and 10 tested positive in a preliminary test.
Subsequent generic exams detected the highly virulent H5N6 strain of avian influenza in both cases.
TOKYO – Japanese authorities announced on Friday that some 220,000 more birds in the northeast of the country have been slaughtered due to an outbreak of bird flu that has reappeared since the end of 2016.
The latest outbreak was detected on a farm in Miyagi prefecture after hundreds of dead chickens were analyzed throughout the week and were subsequently found that they were infected with the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5.
Regional authorities on Friday began slaughtering all the birds on the farm with help from the Japan Self-Defense Forces, a process that will continue until Sunday.
In addition, the transport of birds and eggs within a radius of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) around the three affected farms has been prohibited, state media NHK television said.
According to the NHK, Miyagi Governor Yoshihiro Murai said at a press conference that this is the first outbreak of bird flu detected on a farm in this prefecture.
The outbreak of the virus in this northeastern region follows outbreaks in the country’s southwest, in Miyazaki in January and in Saga in February.
The number of birds slaughtered in Japan has reached around 1.39 million so far since the bird flu was again detected in the country in November 2016 after the 2014 outbreak, prompting the Ministry of Environment to raise the alert to the highest level.
Once again, bird flu is back in the U.S. From 2014 through mid-2015, 48 million chickens and turkeys were killed in the U.S. to prevent the disease’s spread and protect famer’s profits.
Factory farmers routinely fight to keep images of how poultry are raised out of public view, so consumers do not lose their appetites and will continue eating their products. Industrial farmers also fight hard to keep images of how chickens and turkeys are “euthanized” out of the public view.
It is easy to see why. To prevent the spread of bird flu, healthy, floor-reared turkeys and broiler chickens are herded into an enclosed area where they were administered propylene glycol foam to suffocate them. Michael Blackwell, chief veterinary officer at The Humane Society of the United States, likens death by foam to “cuffing a person’s mouth and nose, during which time you are very much aware that your breathing has been precluded.”
“Ventilation shutdown” is also used to kill healthy birds and prevent the spread of the flu. It raises the barn temperature to at least 104F for a minimum of three hours killing the entire flock—a method so extreme that even factory farmers admit it is cruel. During the 2015 outbreak, “Round the clock incinerators and crews in hazmat suits,” were required for the bird depopulation reported Fortune—a sequence likely to occur again.
Factory farmers like to blame bird flu on “migratory birds,” denying that high-volume production methods allow the spread of the disease. But the fact is, factory farms house 300,000 or more egg layers in one barn versus only tens of thousands of birds in “broiler barns” which is why the flu spreads so quickly among egg-laying hens.
Moreover, we the taxpayers compensate factory farmers for their self-induced losses and appalling farm practices.
“The poultry industry appreciates the fact that the USDA helps protect the health of the nation’s livestock and poultry by responding to major animal disease events such as this,” said a letter from the National Association Egg Farmers to Catherine Woteki, Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics during the previous bird flu outbreak. But please “provide indemnification for the whole flock and not just the surviving,” the letter asks.
The only interaction most people have with poultry production is the prices they pay at the grocery store. When prices are low, people do not think twice. When prices jump—as they likely will with the new bird flu outbreak—few realize the higher prices are a direct result of the conditions that make low prices possible because they invite disease.
If an egg carton said, “30,000 hens were suffocated with propylene glycol foam to keep this low price,” would people buy the eggs? Would anyone buy a Thanksgiving turkey whose label said, “thousands of healthy turkeys were smothered to keep this low price?”
In addition to hiding the round-the-clock suffocation of birds to prevent bird flu’s spread, factory farmers assure the public that bird flu is not a threat to humans so people should keep eating their products. Sadly, their claim is not totally true.
During a bird flu outbreak, the unethical and deceptive practices of poultry producers are in full view. Yet, it is not hard to find healthy, protein-packed alternatives to factory farm-produced poultry products. By doing so, the U.S. public sends a strong message to poultry producers.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionAt least six provinces have reported human cases of H7N9 influenza this year, according to Chinese state media
A change in just a single genetic “letter” of the flu virus allows bird flu to pass to humans, according to scientists.
Monitoring birds for viruses that carry the change could provide early warning of risk to people, they say.
Researchers at the University of Hong Kong studied a strain of bird flu that has caused human cases in China for several years.
Birds carry many flu viruses, but only a few strains can cause human disease.
H7N9 is a strain of bird flu that has caused more than 1,000 infections in people in China, according to the World Health Organization.
Most cases are linked to contact with infected poultry or live poultry markets.
The change in a single nucleotide (a building block of RNA) allows the H7N9 virus to infect human cells as well as birds, say Prof Honglin Chen and colleagues.
They say there is “strong interest in understanding the mechanism underpinning the ability of this virus to cause human infections and identification of residues that support replication in mammalians cells is important for surveillance of circulating strains.”
Flare-up
Dr Derek Gatherer, an expert on viruses at Lancaster University, UK, says more surveillance of bird flu viruses is needed.
“The recent flare-up of H7N9 bird flu in China has been the cause of some concern this winter, and the demonstration that the new replicative efficiency mutation is present in this strain is not good news,” he told BBC News.
“Also, the observation that this mutation has been present in other bird flu subtypes like H9N2 and spreading slowly for over 15 years shows that H7N9 isn’t the only kind of bird flu that is potentially a pandemic risk for humans.
“We need to maintain a broader surveillance of bird flu to identify which strains have this mutation.”
The research, published in the journal, Nature Communications, will help scientists understand more about how bird flu viruses adapt to infect humans.
WASHINGTON — The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has confirmed a second case of highly pathogenic H7N9 avian influenza in a commercial breeder flock in Lincoln County, Tennessee.
This H7N9 strain is of North American wild bird lineage and is the same strain of avian influenza that was previously confirmed in Tennessee in a flock of 73,500 breeding broiler chickens.
It is not the same as the China H7N9 virus that has impacted poultry and infected humans in Asia, nor is it related to the virus that caused the 2015 U.S. outbreak.
The flock of 55,000 chickens is located in the Mississippi flyway, within three kilometers of the first Tennessee case.
Samples from the affected flock, which displayed signs of illness and experienced increased mortality, were tested at Tennessee’s Kord Animal Health Diagnostic Laboratory and confirmed at the APHIS National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa.
In 2015, an avian influenza outbreak triggered the destruction of millions of chickens and turkeys in the Midwest.
The USDA also said a flock of 84,000 turkeys at a Jennie-O Turkey Store farm near Barron, Wisconsin, had been confirmed with a low pathogenic H5N2 virus. The USDA stressed it was different from the highly pathogenic H5N2 virus that devastated the Midwest chicken egg and turkey industry in 2015.
Quarantine
State officials quarantined the affected premises, and depopulation has begun. Federal and state partners will conduct surveillance and testing of commercial and backyard poultry within a 10 kilometer (6.2 mile) radius of the site.
The Tennessee Department of Agriculture is working directly with poultry workers at the affected facilities to ensure that they are taking the proper precautions to prevent illness and contain disease spread.
As a reminder, the proper handling and cooking of poultry and eggs to an internal temperature of 165 degrees F. kills bacteria and viruses.
Affects all poultry
Avian influenza (AI) is caused by an influenza type A virus that can infect poultry (such as chickens, turkeys, pheasants, quail, domestic ducks, geese and guinea fowl) and is carried by free flying waterfowl such as ducks, geese and shorebirds.
The UN’s food agency on Friday urged China to step up efforts to contain and eliminate a strain of bird flu which has killed scores of people this year.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that countries neighbouring China were at “high risk” of exposure to the H7N9 strain, which has recently mutated to become far more deadly for chicken than it had been.
The agency also warned that wild birds could carry the strain of the virus to Europe and the Americas, adding that it was baffled as to why China’s efforts to contain the outbreak had not worked as well as anticipated.
The FAO’s statement came after China reported last month that 79 people had died in January alone, the deadliest H7N9 outbreak since the strain first appeared in humans in 2013.
Nearly one in three people who contract H7N9 die from it.
FAO said the recent surge in cases in eastern and southern parts of China meant the virus had caused more reported human cases than all other types of avian influenza viruses, such as H5N1 and H5N6, combined.
Vincent Martin, the FAO’s representative in China, said efforts to contain the outbreak needed to focus on eliminating the strain at its source.
“Targeted surveillance to detect the disease and clean infected farms and live bird markets, intervening at critical points along the poultry value chain—from farm to table—is required,” he said.
“There should be incentives for everybody involved in poultry production and marketing to enforce disease control.”
The agency recognised that China had invested heavily in surveillance of live bird markets and poultry farms while noting that monitoring has “proven particularly challenging as until recently (the strain) has shown no or few signs of disease in chickens.”
The organisation said new evidence from Guangdong in southern China pointed to H7N9 having mutated to become much deadlier for chickens while retaining its capacity to make humans severely ill.
This could make it easier to spot outbreaks, as infected chickens are typically dying within 48 hours of infection, but it also underscores the potentially huge economic implications of the mutation, FAO said.
The FAO emphasised that there was no risk of humans catching the potentially deadly influenza strain by eating chicken.
China has suspended trade in live poultry in several cities, urged consumers to switch to frozen chicken, enforced stricter hygiene standards in fresh food markets, and culled affected flocks.
“With all the efforts taken by China and partners, there is a pressing need to understand why these measures have not worked as well as expected,” the FAO said.
For the second time in three years, a strain of avian flu is on the move through large-scale US chicken farms, alighting in Tennessee last week and more recently (in a milder form) in neighboring Alabama. Neither are known to infect humans.
Public health officials have been warning for decades that massive livestock confinements make an ideal breeding ground for new virus strains.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump and the GOP-dominated Congress are mulling deep budget cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that tracks such flu outbreaks and works with the US Department of Agriculture and local authorities to “minimize any human health risk” they cause.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act would eliminate a federal program called the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which provides the CDC with $891 million in annual funding, about an eighth of its budget. The cuts wouldn’t directly affect the CDC’s flu response program, but as Stat Newsnotes, the CDC “would have a big hole to fill” if the Prevention and Public Health Fund dried up. That’s because it provides funding to crucial functions like promoting vaccines ($300 million for that alone), and the shortfall would have to be made up from other programs—putting the whole agency, potentially including the flu-tracking program, under budgetary stress.
Meanwhile, Trump isn’t expected to provide any additional funding for the CDC when he releases his proposed budget later this week. The opposite, in fact. The president has already announced his intention to boost military spending by $54 billion annually and offset it with an equal level of cuts from federal programs.
So the federal agency responsible for keeping the public safe from avian flu is looking at some serious budget stress going forward. According to the CDC, the risk that people will come down with the flu strain is “low,” but it still sees fit to work with the Department of Agriculture and state authorities on tracking outbreaks.
And public health officials have been warningfor decades that massive livestock confinements make an ideal breeding ground for new virus strains. In its authoritative 2009 report, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production warned that the “continual cycling of viruses and other animal pathogens in large herds or flocks increases opportunities for the generation of novel flu viruses through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human-to-human transmissions.” It added, “Agricultural workers serve as a bridging population between their communities and the animals in large confinement facilities.”
In Asia, a different strain of avian flu is circulating on poultry farms—and it sickened 460 people in China, causing 78 deaths, between the end of September 2016 and the end of February 2017, according to the World Health Organization. The CDC notes that most of those cases came from direct exposure to poultry, while person-to-person spread of the virus is “rare.” The nightmare scenario arrives when an avian flu strain mutates to both jump to people and spread easily among us.
There’s a new strain of bird flu in China that can spread easily, and some stocks could benefit, while others could be hurt
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By
MICHAELBRUSH
COLUMNIST
Here we go again. Though it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention yet among investors, there’s been an alarming spike this winter in a very deadly form of bird flu in China.
Only a few cases of this virus have ever been reported in North America. But this offers little comfort. That’s because this virus — already a serious killer — has morphed into more deadly forms that are easier to catch.
Plus, viruses can quickly travel and pop up in new parts of the world at any time. While a widespread outbreak is unlikely, this virus could potentially grab headlines over the next few months and spook the markets, just as various forms of bird flu have in the past.
So it’s worth taking a few steps to inoculate your portfolio now by owning some health-care stocks that would be driven higher by a new bird flu scare. Fortunately, these stocks are also worth owning anyway, for other reasons. That means you are not giving up much in terms of performance to own this insurance.
I suggest BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. BCRX, +3.29% GlaxoSmithKline PLCGSK, +0.59% and Roche Holding AG RHHBY, -3.00% because they produce vaccines or drugs that treat the flu, or both. You should also be watching airlines and poultry producers as potential trading stocks to buy after pullbacks because those names can get hit hard by a bird flu scare, but then rebound. Before we get to more detail on these names, here’s a look at the new strain of bird flu in China that’s alarming virus experts.
H7N9
The bird flu I’m talking about, called H7N9, originally grabbed headlines in 2013 when it was first discovered in China. From the beginning, H7N9 has been relatively rare, smoldering at about 100 to 300 cases a year.
However, this flu season brought a 130% spike in the number of cases. So far this season, 460 cases have been confirmed, mostly in eastern China, compared with an average of 200 cases a season during 2013-2016.
World Health Organization
Sure, 460 cases — in what is for most people a distant land — may not seem like a lot to be worried about. But you shouldn’t be sanguine, for the following reasons.
• This virus is really deadly. An alarming 41% of people who get it, die. “That’s really high,” says Dan Jernigan, director of the influenza division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
• This year a brand-new version of H7N9 has popped up, called the Yangtze River Delta lineage. Since it’s new, our vaccines don’t work well against it, if at all. Scientists will solve that problem soon enough.
• But some variants of the new form of this virus have changed in ways that make it much more problematic. One change makes it a lot easier for some variants to bind to the human respiratory system. This means it is a lot easier to catch.
• In some cases, H7N9 has morphed into what experts call a “high path” virus (as opposed to “low path”).This means it can spread more easily inside the body, causing more damage and killing victims much more easily.
All of these changes make H7N9 one of the riskiest viruses around.
“H7N9 is at the highest risk level of all the viruses out there because it has the ability to transmit more easily to humans and because the disease is bad,” says Jernigan. “We are concerned. It is something we want to monitor very closely.”
Just because winter is winding down and flu season is ending, doesn’t mean this virus is going away.
“Since 2013 there have been five waves and each of those waves [has] gotten progressively wider,” notes Jernigan. Last year, for example, significant numbers of cases were reported through the end of June. The unusually large number of cases this year also means it will take longer for the virus to trail off as the year progresses. Then reports will pick up again in November.
Will it spread?
Fortunately, virtually all cases so far have been confined to mainland China, chiefly in the provinces of Zhejiang, Guangdong and Jiangsu. There have been cases reported in Taiwan, Malaysia and Canada, but they happened among travelers to China. People catch H7N9 mainly from exposure to poultry — in open-air markets, for example. Human-to-human transmission is rare, and limited to caregivers or immediate family.
But viruses can move around the globe rapidly, and there’s no reason H7N9 can’t do this, too. The H5 strain of avian flu, for example, spread from China to birds and poultry in the U.S. in 2014-15. That happened after birds carrying it flew from Russia to Alaska. From there, migratory waterfowl spread it to the continental U.S. This could happen with the nasty form of H7N9 that’s currently limited to China, says Jernigan.
It’s already here … sort of
A different form of H7N9 was discovered in early March in a chicken farm in south-central Tennessee that supplies Tyson Foods Inc. TSN, +0.88% This was a “high path,” or more lethal form, of the virus, so it killed off part of the flock. The Tennessee site was quarantined and the flock was destroyed to prevent the spread of the disease.
But there’s no way to really know whether this form of H7N9 was picked up by wild birds who might be spreading it to other chicken farms. Chicken farmers use “bio-secure” facilities which supposedly isolate chickens from contact with the outside world. But obviously this technique doesn’t always work, since the Tennessee flock got infected. So no one knows whether this form of H7N9 is spreading in the U.S. right now — about to pop up, grab headlines and tank stocks.
Otherwise, what’s the potential timing of any negative catalyst?
Outbreaks can happen at any time. But the World Health Organization provides regular mid-month H7N9 updates that could be a trigger. The CDC could produce updates at any moment, if significant developments call for them.
Stocks to own as insurance
Here’s more on the stocks to consider owning as portfolio insurance against a bird flu scare:
BioCryst Pharmaceuticals
Because this company is small and it has a drug called Rapivab (peramivir) that’s used to treat viruses, it’s one that’s most likely to move up a lot in any bird flu scare. It’s recently been bouncing higher and retreating on bird flu headlines, suggesting that it is a good trading stock on bird flu news.
Besides peramivir, BioCryst is developing galidesivir as a virus treatment. This is a broad-spectrum antiviral for use against Ebola, Zika and Marburg virus, among others.
I last suggested BioCryst in my stock letter, Brush Up on Stocks, in February 2016 when it traded for under $2 a share, and I’ve owned it since. Though the stock has moved up to around $8.70, I think it’s still a hold because of the promise in virus therapies, but also because BioCryst is developing a drug to treat a nasty, rare disease called hereditary angioedema attacks (HAE).
This rare ailment causes swelling, called edema, which can be devastating because it can restrict airways and cause death. Otherwise, it can cause severe nausea, stomach pain and vomiting.
The company’s HAE therapy works by inhibiting plasma levels of an enzyme called kallikrein. Doing so suppresses a peptide that helps cause HAE swelling. One problem is in how to effectively deliver the company’s treatment, called avoralstat. In late February, BioCryst announced “very encouraging” results with a pill form of avoralstat called BCX7353, says Bruce Zuraw, an HAE expert who is a medical school professor at the University of California, San Diego.
GlaxoSmithKline
GlaxoSmithKline sells the flu medicine Relenza, and it also makes vaccines. So it’s the kind of company whose stock can get a bid in any bird flu scare.
But GlaxoSmithKline looks interesting for other reasons. Yes, it’s facing trouble in the form of generic competition for its top drug, Advair, a respiratory therapy that accounts for about 12% of sales. This threat may be one reason the stock looks undervalued, according to Morningstar analyst Damien Conover.
“The remaining parts of the business are on solid footing, led by new HIV drugs Tivicay and Triumeq as well as strengthening positions in vaccines and consumer products,” he says. The HIV drugs are gaining market share quickly, and they produce high profit margins.
Roche
Roche sells Tamiflu, another go-to drug for flu sufferers. So it’s likely to get attention from investors in any bird flu scare.
But Roche is more about cancer drugs than flu. Its cancer drugs Rituxan, Avastin and Herceptin produce 40% of revenue. The company just reported compelling results for its breast cancer drug, Perjeta.
Morningstar’s Karen Andersen says Roche looks undervalued, given its promising pipeline beyond Perjeta, and its thriving line of business in diagnostics.
Stocks for trades
Traders may want to take positions in stocks that fall sharply on any bird flu scares, as a bet that these stocks will rebound as the fears recede.
Stocks in this category include poultry-related names, such as Tyson Foods, Hormel Foods Corp. HRL, +1.87% Sanderson Farms Inc. SAFM, +1.81% and Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. PPC, +1.00% ; travel-related stocks, including Expedia Inc. EXPE, +1.79%Priceline Group Inc. PCLN, +0.06% Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. RCL, +0.88% and Carnival Corp. CCL, +0.74% ; and airline stocks favored by Warren Buffet — Southwest Airlines Co. LUV, +1.95% Delta Air Lines Inc. DAL, +1.60% United Continental Holdings Inc. UAL, +1.38% and American Airlines Group Inc.AAL, +1.67%
How to avoid bird flu
H7N9 and other variants of bird flu are transmitted mainly through contact with live poultry. So to avoid this horrible disease, it’s best to avoid live bird markets, backyard farms and any contact with live poultry, especially in China. You should remember that most birds that are infected show no signs of illness. They look healthy. Experts say it’s also important to make sure poultry products are fully cooked.
Nation reported 61 fatalities and 160 cases of human infection from H7N9 last month
Monday, 13 March, 2017, 2:37pm
UPDATED : Monday, 13 March, 2017, 2:37pm
China reported 61 fatalities and 160 cases of human infection from H7N9 bird flu in February, the government said on Monday, much higher than in previous years and bringing the death toll in this winter’s outbreaks to 161 since October.
While the total for last month was lower than January’s 79, it was the highest number for the month of February since the deadly strain was first identified in 2013, according to data from the National Health and Family Planning Commission.
The death toll from bird-flu infections tends to drop towards the end of the winter.
The data highlights the scale of the spread of the virus among humans, even after Chinese disease control experts have warned the public to stay on alert. South Korea and Japan are also battling their own major outbreaks and have culled millions of chickens.
The H7N9 strain shows few or no symptoms in poultry, a factor which has limited the number of birds culled in the world’s third-largest producer of broiler chickens and the second-biggest consumer of poultry.
The total of 140 deaths for the first two months of 2017 already surpasses the annual totals for avian flu in China in recent years. In 2010, 147 people died of the H1N1 strain of the virus.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The detection of a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu at a Tennessee chicken farm has poultry farmers stepping up security in an attempt to prevent an outbreak like the one in 2015 that required the destruction of millions of chickens and turkeys in the Midwest. The appearance of milder forms of bird flu at a Wisconsin turkey farm and another Tennessee chicken farm has heightened concern.
Here are some things to know about the state of avian influenza in the U.S. and worldwide, and how the poultry industry has tried to prepare for a recurrence:
THE THREAT
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Sunday that a highly pathogenic form of bird flu was confirmed Saturday in a flock of 73,500 breeding broiler chickens in Lincoln County, Tennessee, after hundreds of birds began dying. It was identified as an H7N9 virus of North American wild bird origin. The USDA stressed that it was not the same H7N9 virus of Chinese lineage that has sickened poultry and people in Asia, nor is it related to the virus that caused the 2015 U.S. outbreak.
Officials quickly moved to kill the entire flock to prevent the virus from spreading. The affected farm supplies Tyson Foods Inc.
The USDA also said a flock of 84,000 turkeys at a Jennie-O Turkey Store farm near Barron, Wisconsin, had been confirmed with a low pathogenic H5N2 virus. The USDA stressed it was different from the highly pathogenic H5N2 virus that devastated the Midwest chicken egg and turkey industry in 2015.
On Thursday, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture reported a case of low pathogenic H7N9 at a different chicken breeding farm operated by an unspecified different company, in Giles County. Officials said they didn’t think one farm sickened the other. The birds in the affected flock were killed.
THE 2015 OUTBREAK
The USDA calls the 2015 outbreak the largest animal health emergency in U.S. history. It cost farmers nearly 50 million birds before it burned out in June 2015. Iowa, the country’s top egg producer, and Minnesota, the No. 1 turkey producer, were by far the hardest hit.
Retail turkey prices weren’t noticeably affected, but egg prices soared. Congressional testimony as the dust was starting to settle conservatively estimated the total economic impact at over $3.3 billion.
An outbreak of H7N8 in Dubois County, Indiana, in January 2016 remained isolated to 10 farms, but more than 414,000 turkeys and chickens died. Most of those farms had a low pathogenic version, but the USDA said it apparently mutated into highly pathogenic at one farm.
HIGH-PATH VERSUS LOW-PATH
The first symptom of highly pathogenic bird flu, the kind that’s almost always fatal to domestic poultry, is typically birds dying en masse. Scientists learned in 2015 that it’s crucial to euthanize entire infected flocks immediately.
“You want a very rapid response and a very rapid stamping out. … The faster the birds die, the faster the outbreak stops,” said Dr. Carol Cardona, a poultry disease expert at the University of Minnesota.
Low pathogenic is more common. Symptoms are typically mild, if any. Infected birds usually recover.
While response plans differ from state to state, a common and effective approach is “controlled marketing.” Infected flocks are not euthanized but are kept quarantined until they recover and test negative for the virus, and then they can be marketed, Cardona said.
That’s what’s being done in Wisconsin, according to the USDA.
FARMERS’ RESPONSE
U.S. producers have stepped up biosecurity in response to the new cases, as well the ongoing outbreaks in Asia, Europe and Africa that have led to the destruction of hundreds of millions of birds and killed dozens of humans. Bird flu viruses don’t usually spread to people except by close contact with infected birds, but health authorities are always alert to the possibility.
Since wild waterfowl are considered the main reservoirs of bird flu, farmers and scientists get nervous when birds are migrating. Droppings from infected birds flying north in the spring, or south in the fall, can get tracked into barns or carried in on contaminated equipment. So producers are being more vigilant about keeping people and vehicles from entering their farms unless they absolutely need to be there.
“They understand this is a high-risk period with the spring migration period, so they’re watching their flocks closely and doing additional surveillance to make sure that if anything pops up, they’re going to identify it quickly,” said Dr. Shauna Voss, senior veterinarian at the Minnesota Poultry Testing Laboratory in Willmar.
Since 2015, many farmers have built the “Danish entry” system into their barns, said Steve Olson, executive director of the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association. Anyone entering or leaving has to sit on a bench, take their boots off, swing their legs around to the “clean” side of the room, put on new boots and clothing that stay in the barn, and reverse the process when they leave.
WHAT ABOUT VACCINES?
Bird flu viruses keep evolving, like human influenza viruses, so a vaccine that works against one strain might be ineffective against another. While an H5N2 vaccine was developed in 2015, it was never deployed in the field. Producers are wary of vaccines because many countries refuse poultry products from countries that use vaccines. That is because tests for the disease look for the same antibodies that vaccines trigger an animal to produce.
Tennessee officials have confirmed that a second commercial breeding poultry operation in Tennessee has tested positive for the avian flu.
Officials say the chicken breeding facility is located in Giles County, which lies south of Nashville and is close to the Alabama state line.
On Sunday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that another farm in southern Tennessee had bird flu. The entire flock of birds in Lincoln County was killed. That farm supplied Tyson foods.
Officials said the latest chicken-breeding operation to be infected is owned by a different company. Investigators do not believe that chickens at one farm sickened those at the other facility.
The Giles County chicken flock has been killed and investigators are testing nearby poultry facilities.
Getty Images
World Health Organization
Exposing the Big Game 