More Than 400K Birds Destroyed To Contain Avian Flu Outbreak

The spread of avian flu in Dubois County, an outbreak discovered Thursday and accelerated into…

Health officials and animal experts are trying to contain the spread of a new and potentially more risky strain of bird flu.

Indiana State Board of Animal Health spokeswoman Denise Derrer says low temperatures have frozen the hoses that carry a foam used to suffocate the flocks.

A day later, however, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) said eight of those nine additional H7 detections were low-pathogenic H7N8 and that tests were ongoing on the ninth flock. Another 156,000 chickens at one of 10 farms also were killed because they were at high risk of contracting the virus. In addition, there are 155,000 egg-laying chickens that are NOT infected, but are being depopulated, again as a precaution.

“We’ve had disease before and we’ve come out of it, but this is way more devastating”, Denu says. They informed me that the strain of avian influenza in IN is thought to be contained.

In Indiana, the USDA quickly deployed personnel and equipment to assist the state with culling birds and testing nearby flocks, said Bret Marsh, Indiana’s state veterinarian. Research shows wild birds’ northern migration introduced the H5N2 strain starting last spring, but officials don’t know whether the fall and winter migration are to blame in Indiana. The CDC said people at greatest risk are those who have close or prolonged unprotected contact with infected birds or their environments. Similar to last year’s outbreak, many trade partners began refusing trade imports and places like the European Union, Japan, and South Africa won’t take poultry from the entire state of Indiana.