The High Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) comeback has made a lot of producers in the state nervous and is giving them flashbacks to 2015 when the disease ravaged the upper Midwest costing the lives of millions of birds and costing operations millions of dollars.
However, that price in 2015 wasn?t paid without getting a little something in return. That is experience. Experience is something you cannot usually attach a price tag to. However, if you think about how we have been able to limit the number of exposures compared with 2015, that price tag could be big savings.
Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig talks about where things are in relation to the outbreak in the state. We haven?t had a commercial flock test positive since the end of April, and only one backyard flock in May.
There have been detections off to our north and west. This shows how much of this is attributable to the migration of seasonal birds through the area. While Iowa is seeing a diminish in numbers, that doesn?t mean you can let your guard down.
Naig says that the lessons learned the hard way in 2015, have made us more prepared to handle the situation in 2022. That?s not to say more lessons won?t be learned from this outbreak., Every Foreign Animal Disease outbreak can teach us something we didn?t already know, but having those recent lessons really helped us see what we could do in a hurry to protect as many birds as possible. None of this would be possible without the hard work of producers.
Now the thirty-day moratorium on live bird exhibitions continues as the last detection date in early May. Naig reassures producers that if we make it into June, we will see that moratorium lifted as promised.
