Federal agriculture officials are sending a team to respond to the latest outbreak of avian influenza in Minnesota, as the state is now reporting a third affected poultry flock.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture emergency response team will arrive in Minnesota on Wednesday, and will be deployed for at least three weeks. It will support the state’s experts from the Minnesota Board of Animal Health and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.
Their work will involve quarantining infected flocks, disease surveillance and coordinating logistics and finances.
Flocks in Meeker and Mower counties tested positive last week. In Stearns County, the deadly strain has also been found in a commercial flock of 24,000 turkeys, which will be euthanized.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that the H5N1 strain of avian influenza is a low risk to the public. No human cases of avian influenza have been detected in the U.S.
But the outbreak represents a serious threat to Minnesota's turkey industry, with nearly 700 farms that raise about 40 million birds a year, the most of any state.
In 2015, 9 million birds in Minnesota were killed by the virus or euthanized to slow its spread.
Poultry producers in the state had been on high alert for weeks, taking steps to increase biosecurity, after the virus was detected in neighboring states, including Iowa and South Dakota.
Officials cautioned that the appearance of avian flu in a backyard flock is a key difference from the 2015 outbreak.
"We are prepared to make sure this outbreak stays small,” said Dr. Jill Nezworski, a poultry veterinarian and a board member of the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association. “And I want to remind all poultry owners that biosecurity takes 100 percent commitment, 24 hours a day, seven days a week."