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HPAI case in Iowa has poultry producers on alert

Poultry producers across the Corn Belt are being advised to increase biosecurity measures after new cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza have been detected this fall.

Iowa Ag Secretary Mike Naig says the state recently had its first confirmation of the disease since May. “We were watching to our north,” he said. “As those birds migrated north, turned around, and came back you started to see new high path cases up in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and elsewhere. That told us those birds were once again carrying the virus.”

He tells Brownfield HPAI cases never resurfaced in the fall during the 2015 outbreak. “Folks are back on a very heightened alert in terms of poultry producers trying to improve their biosecurity and keep separation between those wild birds and domestic birds.”

Naig says HPAI does not present a public health concern.