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Minnesota sees early surge in HPAI cases

Minnesota is seeing an early onset of highly pathogenic avian influenza cases heading into the heart of fall migration.

Minnesota Turkey Growers Association executive director Ashley Kohls says a resurgence of the disease is not surprising.

“But what is happening that’s unexpected is how early it surfaced this fall. We saw our first case of the fall in mid August, and have kind of seen a little bit of a blip again now here in the last week.”

She tells Brownfield in year five of the current outbreak, trends are emerging.

“Every other year based on bird populations and new hatches and age of birds that do migrate, they’re finding that waterfowl that migrate that are younger that maybe haven’t been exposed to disease and don’t have immunity to disease may be a bigger vector, if that makes sense.”

There have been 14 high-path avian flu cases in Minnesota since mid-August, including five commercial flocks this month.