Animal health officials are monitoring case trends with High Pathogenic Avian Influenza.
APHIS says the current outbreak would be much worse if there were not strong bio-security plans in place when the outbreak began last year.
“85 percent of the detections have been new, fresh injects from wild birds. In 2015, the ratio was probably the opposite, where the detections were because of lateral spread farm to farm. Is it enough? Obviously not, but it’s been so good that we have the largest outbreak we’ve ever had, but it would have been exponentially catastrophic if the bio-security practices and plans we didn’t have all in place. I don’t know where we’d be,” said Kevin Shea.
Since the outbreak began last February, 323 cases have been found in commercial facilities and 491 in backyard operations. Nearly 60 million birds have died nationwide.
