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Poultry producers focus on year-round biosecurity

Iowa Ag Secretary Mike Naig says poultry producers across the country remain concerned about highly pathogenic avian influenza as spring approaches.

“We’re a year on from the beginning of the most current outbreak,” Naig said. “We’re certainly hoping that spring does not bring a reoccurrence, but we are planning as if it will.”

He tells Brownfield the surge of the virus over the last year was the largest foreign animal disease outbreak in U.S. history, but… “The outbreak this past year has been nothing like it was in 2015 in that we did not see the lateral movement from farm-to-farm,” Naig said. “That tells me producers absolutely stepped up and that they did a better job of biosecurity. There is always more work to be done there.”

Naig says the state’s most recent confirmed case was in late January.