Happy Nice Mall

The 2014-15 outbreak is considered the most devastating in the country’s history. Although the federal government compensated farmers for lost flocks, it quickly increased prices for poultry and eggs and cost the industry more than $3 billion. In the end, nearly 50 million birds were killed by the virus, mostly in Iowa and Minnesota, or destroyed to prevent its spread.

John Burkel, 54, a fourth-generation turkey breeder in northern Minnesota, watches the spread with dread. In 2015, the virus destroyed his farm in a matter of days, leaving only 70 survivors in a shed with 7,000 birds. The weeks that followed were spent culling, composting the dead, and then repeatedly disinfecting the barns.

As a precaution, health officials recommended that he and his son take the antiviral drug Tamiflu. “We’ve never seen a virus so deadly,” said state legislator Mr. Burkel, who works on the farm with his wife and two children. “It was just terrible.”

Since then, agricultural authorities across the country have forced farmers to adopt a number of biosecurity measures to prevent outbreaks. It includes sealing small holes that could allow mice or sparrows to enter barns, disinfecting the tires of feed delivery trucks before entering a farm, and creating “clean” and “dirty” zones where workers can replace them with new shoes and overalls before stepping in. inside an animal enclosure.

At the same time, experts say federal officials are strengthening the nationwide surveillance system that allows researchers to track a spread of avian flu within wild bird populations in near real time. Poultry veterinarian at Iowa State University who advises local farmers to improve their biosafety practices. “I think the 2015 crisis made us understand that a village is needed to prevent an epidemic and made us much more prepared,” said Yuko Sato.

But being overly vigilant has its limits, especially against a microscopic pathogen that can infiltrate a barn on a single housefly leg. The real threat to a growing number of scientists is the country’s industrialized meat and dairy production system, which relies on genetically identical creatures packed by thousands of people in huge enclosed hangars.

Nearly all of the nine billion chickens reared and slaughtered in the United States each year are genetically a handful of breeds It has been manipulated to support rapid growth and fuller breasts. Birds are also extremely vulnerable to disease outbreaks. Public health veterinarian Dr. “They all have the same immune system or no immune system, so once a virus gets into a barn it will spread like wildfire,” Hansen said.