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A decade of learning as poultry industry continues to battle avian flu

It’s been ten years since the first major outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in the U.S.  And the executive director of the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association says the poultry industry continues to learn and adapt.

Ashley Kohls tells Brownfield high-path avian flu prevention and detection have come a long way.

“Just when you look at how the virus has spread. So in 2015 there was a lot of lateral spread, so farm-to-farm was the primary way the virus spread amongst farms. But if you look at today, I think USDA was recently quoted as saying 82 percent are single bird introductions. So that’s a massive change.”

Speaking to Brownfield at the PEAK poultry conference in Minneapolis Tuesday, she said growers identified weaknesses during the 2015 outbreak that have resulted in improved biosecurity.

“But we’ve also learned that biosecurity alone cannot prevent high-path avian influenza, because if it could we wouldn’t (have) this issue. So things they’re doing (like) in the state of Minnesota to kind of layer on top of robust biosecurity.”

Kohls points to lasers as an example and says they are proving to be an effective wild bird deterrent with more than 100 currently in use on Minnesota turkey farms.