The St. Cloud Times reports in Avian flu infects Minnesota's top turkey county:
A second case of avian influenza has been confirmed in a Kandiyohi County turkey flock.
On Tuesday, The United States Department of Agriculture announced the presence of the highly pathogenic H5N2 virus in a commercial turkey farm of 30,000. This is the eighth confirmation of an infected commercial flock in Minnesota, and the second for Kandiyohi. The first case was discovered in a flock of 26,000 birds on Monday. Three cases were also recently discovered in Stearns County.
Together, Stearns and Kandiyohi represent the top two turkey producing counties in the state, according to the USDA.
Officials say it's too early to speculate whether the highly pathogenic strain could hurt Minnesota's $750 million turkey industry. More than 40 countries banned poultry imports from Minnesota last month, when the first case was reported, though some have since narrowed the bans to poultry from affected counties. Health officials have said the risk to the public from the virus is low. . . .
The article notes that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is watching for dead birds of prey and deceased wild turkeys, which could be victims of the disease, rather than a vector. We believe it's an important bit of disease surveillance, since the woods are soon to be full of hunters who've secured permits.
We thought of this news report when we found this item buried in MinnPost columnist Doug Grow's column, What was Dayton thinking with his $842 million bonding proposal?:
Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul and former chair of the bonding committee when the DFL controlled the House, said that there are economic implications in bonding projects beyond the projects themselves. She pointed to the $18 million Dayton wants to spend for a University of Minnesota Isolation Facility and the current outbreak of bird flu that’s hitting Minnesota turkey farms hard. Studies of such outbreaks would be handled at the isolation facility.
“Do we want to wait until we’re hearing, ‘We will not be buying turkeys from Minnesota?”’ Hausman asked. “Do we really want to wait a year to deal with something like that?”
While it will take time to build the facility and thus won't help turkey farmers immediately, Hausman has a pretty good point. Here in Chippewa County, Jennie-O employs people in its facility in Montevideo.
Big Stone County local food organizer and "backyard" poultry flock keeper Rebecca Terk, on the other hand, asks a different question in Pinfeathers & Needles at Listening Stones Farm.
Photo: These wild turkeys didn't cross the road to get to the other side in January. They did it to block traffic on a Wang Township road, Renville County, between the edge of two plots of RIM conservation acres. The DNR is monitoring the state's wild turkeys to see if there's mortality in these permanent resident wild fowl. Photo by Tristan Corrigan.
We're conducting our spring fundraising drive. If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or use the paypal button below:
Email subscribers can contribute via this link to paypal; use email sally.jo.sorensen at gmail.com as recipient. Donations are not tax deductible.
Comments