Top USDA veterinarian: Bird flu outbreak may last for years and be 'devastating' to poultry

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http://news.yahoo.com/usda-veterinarian-bird-flu-outbreak-could-devastating-220826329--finance.html

Top USDA veterinarian: Bird flu outbreak may last for years and be 'devastating' to poultry

By STEVE KARNOWSKI
Associated Press

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The nation's poultry industry may have to live with a deadly bird flu strain for several years, which would be "devastating," the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief veterinary officer said Thursday. Dr. John Clifford also said that while new cases should drop to close to zero once the weather warms up and kills off the virus, there's "very likely" to be a resurgence this fall when the wild waterfowl that are natural carriers of avian influenza fly south for the winter.

Clifford spoke on a visit to Minnesota, the state hit hardest by outbreaks that have cost producers more than 2.4 million turkeys and chickens in the Midwest since early March. He said the fact that the highly pathogenic H5N2 virus has already appeared as far east as southern Ontario means there's an uncomfortable risk of it spreading to the East Coast where much of the U.S. broiler chicken industry is based.
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Officials say there's no risk to public health or the food supply. Economists don't expect the outbreaks to affect retail prices much because the birds that have been killed by the virus itself or euthanized to stop its spread represent just over 1 percent of the 235 million turkeys produced in the U.S. last year.

The broiler chicken industry, which produces chickens for meat, is clustered along the East Coast in states such as Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and Maryland. Clifford said the waterfowl that brought the virus to an infected farm in southern Ontario are likely from flocks that either migrate along the East Coast or intermingle with flocks that do.

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The federal government is also working to limit the harm from export bans imposed by around 40 countries that are already hurting both the turkey and chicken industries, which combined export more than $5 billion worth of products annually, Clifford said. "We've already lost hundreds of millions of dollars in those markets," he said

[nitpicker]

1. Iowa, tops in egg production, strives to keep bird flu out

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2015/04/17/iowa-eggs-turkey-avian-flu/25970063/

Iowa, tops in egg production, strives to keep bird flu out
David Pitt, Associated Press 9:01 p.m. CDT April 17, 2015
The discovery of bird flu on an Iowa turkey farm has raised serious concerns that the poultry-killing virus could find its way into chicken barns in the nation's top egg-producing state and savage flocks that provide the breakfast staple.

Iowa is home to roughly 50 million hens that lay nearly one in every five eggs consumed in the country. The highly contagious H5N2 virus has not yet been detected in Iowa chicken barns, but it was confirmed Tuesday on a turkey farm in northwest Iowa — marking the first occurrence in the state of the virus, which has forced farmers to kill more than 2.4 million turkeys and chickens in several Midwestern states since March.
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