Surveillance testing finds additional avian flu cases

CHICAGO An Indiana turkey flock has been infected with a deadly type of bird flu in the first new case of the disease in U.S. poultry since June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Friday.

A new strain of the deadly avian influenza virus has been found in a commercial turkey flock in IN, according to USDA.

Meyers added that valuable lessons have been learned since the outbreak a year ago, and there have been great strides by the industry to strengthen biosecurity. The state animal health board website said one of the farms had 12,000 turkeys and another 23,500.

“No egg-laying hens have been affected so we have to wait to see what happens”, he said.

Research has shown that wild birds’ northern migration introduced the H5N2 virus, which began to accelerate from farm to farm last spring. There are no known cases of H7N8 infections in humans.

“We may know more once the remaining work on virus sequencing is completed, likely sometime next week”, Andrea McNally said.

The farms, about 70 miles from Louisville, Kentucky, are within a quarantine area set up around the first farm and that area has been expanded to four neighboring IN counties – Martin, Orange, Crawford and Daviess, the Associated Press reported. This is a different strain of HPAI than the strains that caused the 2015 outbreak. According to the Indiana Board of Animal Health, there are 65 commercial poultry flocks within a 10-kilometer radius of the affected operation.

Pence said he and multiple state agencies are taking the necessary “precautions to contain the situation and minimize the effects to Indiana’s robust poultry industry”. But it’ll take most of 2016 for egg producers to completely replenish flocks, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey said.

“Our (Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza) Preparedness and Response Plan is in place and every flock of chickens in Alabama is tested for avian influenza before it is processed for human consumption”, McMillian said.