Highly pathogenic bird flu has made its first appearances in U.S. commercial poultry flocks this season, affecting one turkey farm in South Dakota and one in Utah and raising concerns that more outbreaks could follow.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that avian influenza, which is deadly to commercial poultry, was confirmed in a flock of 47,300 turkeys in Jerauld County, South Dakota, on Oct. 4 and at a farm with 141,800 birds in Utah’s Sanpete County last Friday.
The outbreaks are the first reported among commercial flocks in the U.S. since the disease struck two turkey farms in the Dakotas in April. Infected flocks are normally destroyed to prevent the flu’s spread, and then the farms are decontaminated.
I wonder if the farms normally have insurance for this kinda thing. “Infected flocks are normally destroyed to prevent the flu’s spread, and then the farms are decontaminated.” sounds damn expensive and ruinous to a plant.
I can’t imagine having to destroy your turkeys in October. There’s no way to recover in time.
Just speculate on gourd futures.
Of it’s big enough to be a full factory farm style plant, then I’d guess the insurance is “butterball owns us and will just send more turkeys once we’re clean”
Thats not how poultry farming works. The big companies have contracts with the farms to buy poultry for a set price. They don’t actually own and operate the farms.
If the farm doesn’t have poultry to sell, it makes no money, which is where insurance comes in.
Yes, they definitely have insurance, especially since most poultry farmers are up to their eyeballs in debt.
Is this the kind of bird flu that can spread to people? Because whoa man is farm country not ready for a deadly flu to start working it’s way through at the moment.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) usually refers to how readily it infects and kills birds, rather than humans.
The usual way we handle HPAI outbreaks is to kill every bird on that site when a single case is discovered. So if you have backyard chickens and an indoor parrot, from what I understand they’d euthanize your parrot if your chickens got sick. Or if you have an outbreak of a million hen egg farm, you depopulate those million chickens en mass, often though a less than humane method like suffocating then in foam or giving them heat stroke because it minimizes human exposure.
If you remember when eggs were expensive not too long ago, that was HPAI as well.
It’ll be fine. Birds aren’t real, so bird flu can’t be real either.
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Reminds me of the joke about a man that dies in a flood waiting for good to save him while turning down any actual rescuers.
Meat eaters: if you need a sign from God or fate or whatever to start being vegan, here’s yet another one. Try not to drown before you change your mind.
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