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Naig pleased with HPAI response efforts

Iowa Ag Secretary Mike Naig says the state hasn’t had a positive case of highly pathogenic avian influenza since early May.

“We will be able to lift the last quarantine on one of our commercial sites here in the next couple of weeks,” Naig said. “Remember, this started at the beginning of March.”

He tells Brownfield this year’s HPAI response was more efficient than the outbreak in 2015. “There’s really two things I would give credit to,” Naig said. “One is the preparedness of producers. They learned a lot about biosecurity and how to keep things off of their farm. The second factor was a faster, more effective response on the part of the state of Iowa and the USDA.”

Naig says the disease didn’t have farm-to-farm spread during this year’s outbreak.