All 400K birds at IN farms with bird flu killed

But even after euthanizing hundreds of thousands of birds, farms are not yet in the clear.

Animal health officials responding to a bird flu outbreak in southwest in say crews have finished killing more than 400,000 birds ordered euthanized at the 10 affected commercial poultry farms.

Last year’s outbreak led to the deaths of more than 48 million chickens and turkeys, either killed by the virus or culled to contain it. No cases were reported in humans.

“The low-path H7N8 virus was identified during testing in the 10-kilometer zone around the initial flu-positive flock”, in state veterinarian Bret Marsh said in a statement over the weekend.

This isn’t the same strain as the H5N2 strain that devastated the poultry industry — mostly in the Upper Midwest — last summer. Though different from the one that hit Minnesota, that it mutated from low pathogenic to highly pathogenic shows how quickly a strain can become a problem. The CDC said people at greatest risk are those who have close or prolonged unprotected contact with infected birds or their environments.

All of the birds in flocks that officials confirmed had infected birds must be euthanized under USDA protocols dictated by global trade treaties.

“I have been saying that bird flu would return, and it was a matter of “when” not “if”, said Agriculture Secretary Joe Bartenfelder in an MDA news release.

“Any movement off this farm of birds has stopped”, Denise Derrer, with the Indiana State Board of Animal Health, told Indiana Public Media. In addition, avian influenza does not present a food safety risk. “Sampling of wild birds in the affected areas in IN will most likely help in determining the source of the infection”. “They will remain in the ground for at least 30 days, after which they can be used as compost material because the virus is dead”. A USDA spokeswoman says the viral strain has not yet been found in wild birds, and that suggests it could have developed in wild birds that overwintered in southern Indiana.

The most immediately noticeable impact has been on export markets. Everyone hopes this outbreak doesn’t turn into what happened in 2015. 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.

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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.