USA: Another northwest Iowa turkey flock has bird flu

By Jared Strong A commercial flock of about 90,000 turkeys in Ida County is the seventh to be infected by highly pathogenic avian influenza this month in northwest Iowa, according to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. The state’s detection rate of the virus at commercial facilities has dramatically increased in December, with six of those seven confirmations in the past week. Those virus confirmations led to the culling of about 385,000 turkeys. Entire flocks are destroyed to prevent the spread of the virus from facility to facility. The mostly likely source of transmission has been wild, migrating birds, which can be infected and asymptomatic. The virus is often deadly for domestic birds. It poses a low health risk to humans. There have now been a total of 30 known infected commercial and backyard flocks in Iowa this year, with a total of nearly 16 million birds. That is by far the biggest bird death toll of any state this year, even though other states have ...