Cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) are on the rise once again in Minnesota after federal officials announced that nearly one million chickens at a Wright County egg farm tested positive for the disease last week.
When it comes to HPAI outbreaks, Michael Crusan with the Minnesota Board of Animal Health says their job is stop the spread of the disease.
“We do that through our response,” Crusan said. “The first thing we do is surveillance. We are looking for sick birds, working with individual owners, and industry to send us samples so we can test those and find out where the virus is.”
In the past 30 days, Minnesota has seen the most amount of bird flu cases nationwide with over 1.3 million birds testing positive. When cases are confirmed, the Board of Animal Health tailors its response to each case individually.
“That means the resources that we deploy and the manpower we deploy to that response,” Crusan said. “That can vary.”
In smaller cases of backyard flocks, that could take one or two people. In a larger commercial operation involving several thousand or hundreds of thousands of birds, the state changes its response to that specific site by expanding resources.
“The first thing they’re going to do when they get to that flock is they’re going to look around, look at the site, and make sure there’s no risk of spreading the virus off the site,” added Crusan. “Then they’re going to start setting up depopulation. That is where we depopulate birds that are infected with the virus or reside in the same barn or facility as those who have the virus. As viruses go, they need that living host to spread. Our response by depopulating, what we’re doing, is taking away any of those living hosts that are either infected with the virus, or in the same facility that could become infected and further spread the virus.”
After depopulation, more steps are taken including composting the carcasses to further kill the virus.
“The whole goal of our response is to eventually get to the point months down the road where that barn or that farm can bring new birds back into the facility.”
In total, over 5.5 million Minnesota birds have tested positive since the outbreak began in February 2022.
According to the Minnesota Board of Animal Health, HPAI strains in the U.S. have not been found to cause illness in people. Chicken, turkey, eggs, and other poultry products are safe to eat if properly handled.