An outbreak of bird flu is affecting more states but still highly unlikely to spread to humans, officials said.
Iowa had its first confirmed case of bird flu, and another case was identified in Minnesota, the Department of Agriculture said Tuesday. That brings the number of states with bird flu cases up to 13, including Montana, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, California, Oregon, Idaho and Washington.
Bird flu outbreaks aren’t new to the poultry industry, but the one that started late last year is the “worst that we have had in quite a few years,” John Glisson, vice president of research for the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association, told the Washington Examiner.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention emphasized that the risk of human infection from this outbreak is very low.
However, similar viruses have “infected people in other parts of the world and it’s possible that human infections associated with these viruses may occur in the United States,” CDC spokesman Ian Branam told the Washington Examiner.
Human infections also typically only occur in people that came into direct contact with the infected birds and it is extremely difficult and rare for a human to pass on the infection to another person, the CDC has said.
So far hundreds of thousands of birds have been euthanized due to the outbreak.
The outbreak can impact the poultry industry, and not just by compelling poultry farmers to euthanize birds.
Some countries have already started to restrict poultry and egg exports from the United States due to bird flu concerns. China, for one, has restricted all poultry exports.
Other countries such as Mexico and Canada have only restricted imports from parts of the country that are affected by the outbreak.
Federal and state officials have steadily worked to address the outbreak and keep it from spreading, he added.
The Department of Agriculture said the United States has the strongest bird flu surveillance program in the world.
The industry procedure for an outbreak is to “quarantine, euthanize the animals, clean up and try not to let it spread,” Glisson said.
So how did the outbreak happen?
Apparently the culprits were migrating geese and ducks. That breed of birds can get infected with the virus but not get sick. This particular virus originated in Asia and made its way to America through migrating birds.
The virus is then spread to other birds through excrement from the geese and ducks as they fly north, Glisson said. That excrement can get tracked into poultry farms on vehicle tires or through shoes.
“Geese put out a lot of excrement,” he added.
