Bird Flu Found At Wisc. Location, An executive of one of Wisconsin’s largest egg-production companies said he is committed to saving its facility near Lake Mills that received confirmation this week that a highly contagious avian influenza virus was found in its flock of 800,000 chickens.
“We’re committed to a safe work environment for our employees, the health and welfare of our hens and to produce wholesome, affordable food for the country to eat and consume. That doesn’t change because our facility unfortunately tested positive (for the virus),” said William Rehm, president of Daybreak Foods Inc., based in Lake Mills.
The egg-laying facility with 60 employees will become productive again after a difficult and emotional cleanup process is finished that will include euthanizing all 800,000 chickens, Rehm said. The virus also hit another commercial chicken facility with 200,000 hens in Jefferson County as well as one each in Minnesota and Iowa.
“We’ll follow the proper protocol to (euthanize the hens) and we’ll be very humane,” Rehm said. “It’s unfortunate and we feel bad for the animals and we feel for our team members at that location that they have to work through this process with us. It’s not a good deal for anybody.”
Rehm said Daybreak — which has 13.5 million hens at egg-laying facilities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Ohio — also is committed to the daunting task of trying to find a way to stop the dangerous H5N2 avian influenza virus.
Despite the fact that every facility that has been struck with the virus had good biosecurity plans in place, state and federal agriculture officials say the virus has affected more than 7 million turkeys and chickens since March in Midwest states. That includes 1.2 million turkeys and chickens on six commercial farms in four counties in Wisconsin. A flock of 90,000 turkeys in Barron County was the latest casualty in Wisconsin, the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection said Thursday.
“It’s a challenge for our industry. These are difficult times,” said Rehm. “You never like to see anything happen to our hens. Their health and welfare are on our minds every day, whether they are ... at one of our facilities in Wisconsin or any of our facilities that are producing eggs.”
Experts believe the virus is spread by fecal material or oral secretions from migratory waterfowl flying over commercial poultry facilities located in the Mississippi flyway. They theorize that the infected material is reaching the facilities’ large air intakes and it gets spread by fans and other equipment.
Daybreak’s Lake Mills facility immediately started testing its flock every day for the virus after the company learned another Jefferson County facility tested positive for the virus about 10 days ago, Rehm said. Every test turned up negative until they found dead birds earlier this week, he added.
“We always run a very biosecure environment around all our complexes,” Rehm said. “We have very limited access, we work very closely with all our team members to make sure we’re running our proper precautions every day. As the avian flu elevated in the turkey flocks in Minnesota, we elevated our biosecurity and continued to elevate the precautions when the first flock in Wisconsin broke positive. We were as tight as tight can be. We put a perimeter around it. But if it comes in through the air, at this point there’s no protection.”
Rehm said a possible vaccine offers some hope of stopping or slowing the virus but there isn’t a broad-spectrum vaccine on the horizon to stop all of the potential high-pathogen strains that could affect the industry. He also said countries that import U.S.poultry products may not approve of any vaccination programs.
“It’s more than saying, ‘Let’s give them injections and move on.’ I think there are other potential solutions we may have to look at as we move down the path here,” Rehm said.
The virus is expected to slow with warmer temperatures later this spring but return again in fall when the birds migrate south and temperatures cool. So poultry industry officials are in a hurry to find a way to stop the fecal material from getting inside the facilities, Rehm said.
“It’s hard to say how long it’s going to take us as an industry to find an economical way to filter the air in the barn so we prevent the particulate matter from entering the facility with microscopic forms of bacteria on it,” Rehm said. “It’s not like putting a filter on your furnace. It’s a much more complex and larger issue than that. Can we do it by this fall? I honestly don’t know.”
Experts say the virus is not known to have spread to humans and is not expected to pose a risk to public health or the food supply. Nevertheless, Jefferson County health officials are offering free screening of the virus for Daybreak’s employees who work at the affected facility, Rehm said.
The egg-laying facility with 60 employees will become productive again after a difficult and emotional cleanup process is finished that will include euthanizing all 800,000 chickens, Rehm said. The virus also hit another commercial chicken facility with 200,000 hens in Jefferson County as well as one each in Minnesota and Iowa.
“We’ll follow the proper protocol to (euthanize the hens) and we’ll be very humane,” Rehm said. “It’s unfortunate and we feel bad for the animals and we feel for our team members at that location that they have to work through this process with us. It’s not a good deal for anybody.”
Rehm said Daybreak — which has 13.5 million hens at egg-laying facilities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Ohio — also is committed to the daunting task of trying to find a way to stop the dangerous H5N2 avian influenza virus.
Despite the fact that every facility that has been struck with the virus had good biosecurity plans in place, state and federal agriculture officials say the virus has affected more than 7 million turkeys and chickens since March in Midwest states. That includes 1.2 million turkeys and chickens on six commercial farms in four counties in Wisconsin. A flock of 90,000 turkeys in Barron County was the latest casualty in Wisconsin, the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection said Thursday.
“It’s a challenge for our industry. These are difficult times,” said Rehm. “You never like to see anything happen to our hens. Their health and welfare are on our minds every day, whether they are ... at one of our facilities in Wisconsin or any of our facilities that are producing eggs.”
Experts believe the virus is spread by fecal material or oral secretions from migratory waterfowl flying over commercial poultry facilities located in the Mississippi flyway. They theorize that the infected material is reaching the facilities’ large air intakes and it gets spread by fans and other equipment.
Daybreak’s Lake Mills facility immediately started testing its flock every day for the virus after the company learned another Jefferson County facility tested positive for the virus about 10 days ago, Rehm said. Every test turned up negative until they found dead birds earlier this week, he added.
“We always run a very biosecure environment around all our complexes,” Rehm said. “We have very limited access, we work very closely with all our team members to make sure we’re running our proper precautions every day. As the avian flu elevated in the turkey flocks in Minnesota, we elevated our biosecurity and continued to elevate the precautions when the first flock in Wisconsin broke positive. We were as tight as tight can be. We put a perimeter around it. But if it comes in through the air, at this point there’s no protection.”
Rehm said a possible vaccine offers some hope of stopping or slowing the virus but there isn’t a broad-spectrum vaccine on the horizon to stop all of the potential high-pathogen strains that could affect the industry. He also said countries that import U.S.poultry products may not approve of any vaccination programs.
“It’s more than saying, ‘Let’s give them injections and move on.’ I think there are other potential solutions we may have to look at as we move down the path here,” Rehm said.
The virus is expected to slow with warmer temperatures later this spring but return again in fall when the birds migrate south and temperatures cool. So poultry industry officials are in a hurry to find a way to stop the fecal material from getting inside the facilities, Rehm said.
“It’s hard to say how long it’s going to take us as an industry to find an economical way to filter the air in the barn so we prevent the particulate matter from entering the facility with microscopic forms of bacteria on it,” Rehm said. “It’s not like putting a filter on your furnace. It’s a much more complex and larger issue than that. Can we do it by this fall? I honestly don’t know.”
Experts say the virus is not known to have spread to humans and is not expected to pose a risk to public health or the food supply. Nevertheless, Jefferson County health officials are offering free screening of the virus for Daybreak’s employees who work at the affected facility, Rehm said.
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