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Iowa poultry producers’ ‘hearts go out’ to Indiana peers

A leader in Iowa’s poultry industry says U.S. egg and turkey farmers are resilient and will “get through” an outbreak of avian influenza in Indiana.

“We think that they’ve caught it early and are working their best to stamp it out,” Randy Olson, executive director of the Iowa Poultry Association, told Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson.  “One of the really curious things about this is that it happened in the deep of winter.”

The hearts of Iowa producers who were hit by avian flu last year go out to their peers in Indiana, said Olsen.  The strain of avian flu that has struck in Indiana is considered less virulent than the “highly pathogenic” strain that hit Iowa last year.

“We think that these ‘low path’ cases were identified through the surveillance, testing and the control areas and we think that it’s proof that our system of identification of disease is successful,” he said.

Avian influenza cases have recently been identified in France and Asia. Olson says Iowa poultry producers are conducting “trace backs” to determine if their operations have had any connection with the flocks in Indiana that have been hit by avian flu.

“We shouldn’t kid ourselves,” he said.  “When we have livestock production, we have disease.  This is an example of a case that has gotten more attention lately, it’s more widely known. Our farmers just need to do a great job of biosecurity to keep this disease out of their farms.”

During the outbreak in September of 2015, more than 48 million chickens and turkeys either died from the bird flu or were euthanized to contain the spread of the disease.

This story reported by O. Kay Henderson of Radio Iowa

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