With bird flu spreading, Iowa poultry farmers fear their luck won’t hold

WAYLAND - Even Iowa poultry producers who so far have escaped the bird flu can't escape the ominous feeling that it could strike at any moment.

'This is by far the biggest scare I've ever experienced,” said third-generation turkey producer Russ Yoder, who farms near Wayland.

'You can be doing everything right and a sick sparrow can drop it in on you,” said Yoder, whose family started raising turkeys in 1936.

Another third-generation, Wayland-area turkey producer, Tim Graber, said he's never seen anything like it before.

'We've had disease scares. They come and go. You can treat them and deal with it. But with this one the government comes in and shuts you down,” said Graber, who raises 350,000 turkeys per year.

A few weeks ago, when some of Graber's turkeys were acting strangely, he flew lab samples to Ames and waited on tenterhooks 36 hours for the results.

Though the results came back negative, Graber said it was an 'emotionally draining” experience.

'You can take all precautions, do all the work, spend all the money and still get it,” he said.

With the addition of four new cases Friday - including a 1 million hen-laying facility in Madison County, the first infection outside northwest Iowa - the state has recorded 21 cases of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu since the first one was confirmed April 14.

In an effort to stop the spread of the disease, those farms have been quarantined, and more than 16 million chickens and 1 million turkeys will be euthanized and hygienically disposed.

With 13 new cases announced this week, the disease appears to be on an upward trajectory in Iowa.

'This is about as scary as it gets for folks in the industry,” said Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey, who has been coordinating state efforts to contain the disease. 'It's nerve-wracking that it's out of their control, and they are worrying about it 24/7.”

Both Yoder and Graber say they have heightened biosecurity measures.

'We clean out our pens once a day. We have stopped tourism visits. We have one person caring for a barn, and we don't let anyone else in or out,” said Yoder, who raises 220,000 turkeys per year.

Graber said that he and his employees disinfect their boot covers before and after entering a building, and that feed trucks and other delivery vehicles disinfect tires before entering and leaving his facility.

But, said Randy Olson, executive director of the Iowa Poultry Association and the Iowa Egg Council, 'Despite best practices, farms are still being affected.”

Iowa egg producers, 'on pins and needles over the disease,” are not taking calls from reporters, Olson added.

'They are hunkered down, trying to keep their operations clean, searching for answers and hoping and praying it does not strike them,” he said.

Olson said the state's egg producers are re-evaluating their biosecurity, considering 'everything outside the barn as dirty.”

Gretta Irwin, executive director of the Iowa Turkey Federation, said most of the state's turkey producers are clustered around two large processing plants - the Tyson Foods plant in Storm Lake in northwest Iowa and the West Liberty Foods plant in southeast Iowa.

Olson said egg production is a statewide industry, though most of the largest producers are in northwest and north-central Iowa.

With the Madison County exception, all Iowa cases have been in the northwest quadrant. But Yoder, Graber and 15 other Wayland-area turkey producers fear their luck won't hold.

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