Iowa producers hit by bird flu get the all-clear

CEDAR RAPIDS - All 72 commercial Iowa poultry producers hit by the bird flu earlier this year are clear to restock their farms, state and federal agriculture officials announced Friday.

During a conference call with reporters, Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey said both biosecurity measures and surveillance have been intensified to guard against another outbreak this fall.

Noting that 'farmers look every day for sick or dead birds,” Northey said no new indication of the disease has yet been seen.

Kevin Petersburg, a veterinarian with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said the surveillance includes testing of wild birds, which are widely believed to have introduced the disease to commercial poultry farms late last year.

All of the 19,654 wild birds tested since July 1 have been negative, he said.

The agency, he said, intends to hire an additional 350 veterinarians and animal health technicians as part of efforts to prepare in case of another outbreak.

Petersburg said a bird flu vaccine has been developed and that limited supplies are available.

'The idea is that it would be used as a tool and not as the end-all” for the problem, he said.

The vaccine, which must be injected into each individual bird, will not be used pre-emptively but as needed to reduce the impact of the disease, Petersburg said.

Thanksgiving turkeys will not be affected by Iowa's bird flu outbreak, according to Gretta Irwin, executive director of the Iowa Turkey Federation.

Whole turkeys for roasting are raised in other states unaffected by bird flu, according to Irwin, who said the primarily male turkeys raised in Iowa are used in ground turkey and other processed products.

Frozen whole turkeys, she said, are selling in a range of 79 to 99 cents a pound, while whole fresh turkeys sell for about $2 per pound.

Randy Olson, executive director of the Iowa Poultry Association, said Iowa egg producers may not fully recover until early in 2017, in part because of limited supplies of replacement chicks.

Iowa, long the nation's leading producers of eggs, had more that 60 million laying hens before the outbreak.

That number stood at 33.9 million and climbing in September, when Iowa was eclipsed by Ohio as the leading egg producing state, according to Northey.

'We believe there will be ample egg supplies for the holidays,” Olson said.

The quarantines of affected producers were lifted only after the sites had been cleaned and disinfected and after they has passed environmental tests and undergone a 21-day fallow period.

Those 72 commercial premises, with a combined 31.5 million birds, included 35 turkey flocks, 22 egg production flocks, 13 pullet flocks, one chicken breeding flock and one mail-order hatchery.

The first was cleared in July and the last was cleared Tuesday, officials said.

Petersburg said the U.S. government had paid $200 million in indemnity payments to affected poultry producers as of Nov. 6 and that response operations, which include cleaning, disinfecting and disposal of carcasses, has cost an additional $601 million.

Five backyard flocks remain under quarantine and are expected to be cleared for repopulation in a month.