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 In visits to six affected sites in Iowa last week, a Reuters
reporter found procedures at three in Sioux County did not comply
with USDA or state protocols for restricting access to infected
sites, providing protective gear to workers and cleaning the wheels
of vehicles leaving the sites.
Burke Healey, the USDA's national incident commander coordinating
response to the bird flu, said he was concerned about the findings
of lax biosecurity in Iowa after hearing about them from Reuters.
Shortfalls in biosecurity can violate agreements signed by farm
owners, he said. "If they're allowing you to drive in and out of
that property unrestricted, then that's going against what we've
requested of them and what they've agreed to do for us," Healey
said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and state officials have
established quarantine zones and mandated strict biosecurity
procedures at and around farms in Iowa and other affected states.
Steps include controlling access and minimizing traffic at infected
farms; requiring protective clothing for workers; killing all
poultry and securely disposing of carcasses, litter, feed and any
other appropriate materials, including manure; and cleaning and
disinfecting the affected premises, equipment and vehicles.
The USDA is meeting with industry trade groups in Washington
Thursday, and with state and poultry groups on Friday in Des Moines,
the state capital, to talk about improving biosecurity on affected
farm sites, according to people familiar with the situation.
Infected farms must create a "clean and disinfect line," and all
vehicles must be sanitized as they enter and leave the property,
according to Iowa state agriculture officials. Any farmer who wants
to move poultry or poultry products off an infected site must get a
permit from the state.
In Iowa, the USDA has agreed to enforce compliance with the "clean
and disinfect" line. "USDA has been overseeing operations on the
affected sites and they have agreed to oversee the enforcement of
that line," said a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Agriculture
and Land Stewardship.
In compliance with USDA guidance on restricted access, Reuters was
not permitted access to two sites owned by Daybreak Foods near Eagle
Grove, or to a site near Harris, Iowa, run by Sunrise Farms, an
affiliate of Sonstegard Foods Company. Daybreak Foods did not
respond to a request for comment. Sonstegard declined to comment.
However, at a Center Fresh Group facility near Sioux Center, which
housed about 4.9 million hens, a worker cleaning the tires of
vehicles exiting the property waved a reporter's car in to the site
without inspection. On a public road running alongside the facility,
passenger cars drove by unstaffed barricades at a site meant to
control access, one of which lay on the ground. Center Fresh, based
in Sioux Center, is one of the largest U.S. egg producers.
At another Center Fresh facility near the town of Ireton, workers
were observed dumping hen carcasses from a rectangular blue gas
chamber into a front-end loader. The workers wore short sleeves and
hospital masks, not the protective suits and air-purifying
respirators recommended in a USDA directive.
At that same farm, a worker who asked the Reuters reporter to leave
did not disinfect the visitor's shoes, which had come in contact
with the farm's feather-covered grounds.
Center Fresh has at times modified standard USDA protocols on access
and protective gear to speed up culling of flocks, while still
ensuring safety on the farms and in the community, Chief Operating
Officer J.T. Dean said in a statement to Reuters. "This has been a
process that is evolving every day, and that work is ongoing as we
learn more about our response," he said.
At an infected farm owned by Fedders Poultry near Orange City, the
tires on the reporter’s car were not disinfected when he left.
"I am not involved," said Mark Fedders, the farm owner. He said it
is up to government officials regulate traffic on and off the farm,
disinfect vehicles, protect the perimeter and store dead birds. "I
personally am not the one in charge of security."
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At the Fedders farm, a truck driver wearing a Clean Harbors baseball
cap also left the site without having his wheels cleaned. Clean
Harbors Inc, an environmental services company based in Norwell,
Massachusetts, has a contract with the USDA to help clean infected
farms in Iowa and Minnesota.
Clean Harbors said it is charged with removing poultry from infected
barns, disposing of carcasses and decontaminating infected
facilities. Spokesman Eric Kraus said he was not there to see the
truck driver at the Fedders farm, but that the company cleans and
sanitizes all of its vehicles on infected farm sites and provides
necessary biosecurity equipment to its staff.
Feathers are a concern because they are believed to be carriers of
the virus, potentially blown by the wind from farm to farm. Wild
birds also are thought to carry the flu virus, which can be tracked
onto poultry farms by people or trucks that come into contact with
their contaminated feces.
The highly infectious bird flu virus has not crossed over to humans
in the United States, as it did in Asia following a 2003 outbreak,
but transmission to humans is possible, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
Concerns about the USDA's effectiveness in leading efforts to
contain the outbreak have been raised in Congress, by the states and
in the poultry industry.
"The reality of this situation requires us to engage in an
all-hands-on-deck approach, developing a strategy in which we put
all of the resources we have at our disposal together with all
resources possible from states and producers to best stop the spread
of this disease," said USDA spokesman Brian Mabry.
In Iowa, 60 farms have been infected so far by bird flu, according
to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. It is
not known if conditions like those observed by Reuters exist at
other infected Iowa farms, or those in 15 other states with
commercial or backyard flocks affected by bird flu.
CONTROL MEASURES VITAL
Iowa, the nation’s largest egg producer, has suffered the largest
bird-flu losses of any state, 25.5 million birds out of more than 38
million dead birds nationwide, according to the USDA. Officials in
Iowa, like those in other states, are working with USDA to contain
the outbreak.
As soon as a USDA lab confirms a bird flu case, Iowa officials move
to quarantine the affected farm, establishing an “infected zone”
with a minimum radius of 10 kilometers, or 6.2 miles.
The USDA, meanwhile, enters into a “flock plan” agreement with
responsible parties, which typically include the state, the farmer,
or the company that owns the birds, if the farmer is a contract
grower. According to a seven-page agreement template reviewed by
Reuters, such agreements lay out responsibility for killing and
disposing of the birds, cleaning and disinfecting the site, and
protective equipment for workers. . The workers’ employer is
responsible for providing the gear and making sure it is worn –
whether that employer is the farmer, the state or USDA.
Reuters has not seen the individual agreements for any of the
infected Iowa farm sites it has visited.
(Reporting by Tom Polansek in Ireton, Iowa, and P.J. Huffstutter in
Chicago; editing by David Greising, Jo Winterbottom and John
Pickering)
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