Nearly all 400K birds at Indiana farms with bird flu killed

“We’ve had disease before and we’ve come out of it, but this is way more devastating”, Denu says.

Almost 120,000 turkeys have been killed on four farms, with six farms with about 121,000 turkeys left to euthanize.

After the first H5N8-affected farm was reported on Jan 15, the Indiana Board of Animal Health (IBAH) announced nine additional H7 detections on Jan 16 and said initial tests indicated highly pathogenic H7N8, a subtype that hasn’t been detected before in the United States, and that further tests were under way. Officials have never dealt with this strain before, and wild birds are thought to spread the disease to farms through feces dropped from the air, making infections hard to prevent.

Officials hope the current outbreak has been contained and that there’s no wider impact.

There is always uncertainty around any new strain of influenza because the virus acquires mutations passing from host to host.

“It appears that there was a low pathogenic virus circulating in the poultry population in this area, and that virus is likely mutated into a highly pathogenic virus in one flock”, said USDA chief veterinarian, Dr. John Clifford. That strain led to the deaths of 48 million birds, mostly chickens and turkeys.

As with other avian flu viruses, the CDC recommends antiviral medication for symptomatic people. The Minnesota Board of Animal Health is monitoring the situation.

Marsh alerted other states about the new virus outbreak on an emergency conference call in the early hours on Friday. But he thinks it was spread from a wild bird. Five of the affected 10 commercial turkey flocks, all in Dubois County, have been depopulated while efforts continue despite the cold weather.

The most immediately noticeable impact has been on export markets.

The carcasses are kept in the barn where they were killed, and composted for 30 days — a process that kills the virus. 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.