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 The infected Iowa birds were being raised near the city of Harris by
Sunrise Farms, an affiliate of Sonstegard Foods Company, the company
said.
The facility houses 3.8 million hens, according to the company,
which sells eggs to food manufacturers, government agencies and
retailers.
"We went to great lengths to prevent our birds from contracting AI
(avian influenza), but despite best efforts we now confirm many of
our birds are testing positive," Sonstegard said in a statement.
The flock has been quarantined, and birds on the property will be
culled to prevent the spread of the disease, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture said. The virus can kill nearly an entire infected flock
within 48 hours.
The Agriculture Department said the Iowa flock numbered 5.3 million
birds. The larger figure likely represents the capacity of the farm,
while the company number was the actual number of birds on site,
said Bill Northey, Iowa's secretary of agriculture.
A loss of 3.8 million birds represents more than 6 percent of the
egg-laying hens in Iowa and more than 1 percent of the U.S. flock,
meaning "there definitely will be some customers that will be
impacted by this," Northey said.
Iowa was already among 12 states that have detected bird flu in
poultry since the beginning of the year. The other states are
Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota,
Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin.
The Agriculture Department has spent at least $45 million responding
to the U.S. outbreak, including costs for testing, quarantines
around infected facilities, and compensation for producers whose
birds have been killed by the virus or culled. The figure does not
include the cost to producers from the months of downtime in barns
after infections have been detected.
The infections also have hurt the $5.7 billion U.S. export market
for poultry and eggs.
For producers "in the back of their head is how greatly they could
be impacted by this disease," Northey said. He did not know the
monetary value of the 3.8 million birds.
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Bird flu, also called avian influenza or AI, is a viral disease that
infects birds. Officials believe wild birds are spreading the virus
but they do not know how it is entering barns.
In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker on Monday declared a state of
emergency after three poultry flocks became infected in the past
week, according to his office. The infected birds, more than 326,000
in all, were chickens at an egg-laying facility, turkeys and a
backyard flock of mixed-breed birds.
Walker has authorized the state's National Guard to help contain the
disease, citing "thin" resources available from the federal
government. A state spokeswoman said guardsmen would disinfect
trucks exiting infected premises.
A spokeswoman for the U.S Department of Agriculture did not respond
to questions about federal resources. The agency has deployed about
60 people to Minnesota, the top U.S. turkey-producing state, which
has found more infected flocks than any other state.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers the
risk for human infections to be low, and no human cases have been
reported.
(Additional reporting by P.J. Huffstutter in Chicago; Editing by
Matthew Lewis, Toni Reinhold)
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