Bird flu ebbing in Minnesota as Iowa cases rise

Even as Iowa struggles under the weight of a bird flu outbreak that has affected nearly 10 million birds in about a week, officials in Minnesota are hopeful they are finally making progress in dealing with the deadly virus.

Minnesota has reported only one new case since Friday, after averaging as many as four cases a day the previous week. The state expects to be caught up with its efforts to kill birds at infected facilities as soon as Thursday.

"We do take that as a positive sign, but I would never be so bold as to predict what the virus is going to do or what the spread might be. But it feels like we're catching up," said Joe Kelly, director of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety's division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

At the same time, Iowa has seen the outbreak of the bird flu virus, which can decimate a flock in 48 hours, intensify. This week alone, Iowa officials have reported the outbreak at five facilities, mostly at egg-laying facilities with more than 6 million birds. Those birds likely will be destroyed.

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While Minnesota and Wisconsin have called the National Guard to help with their response to massive outbreaks, Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey said Monday he believes state and federal officials can adequately manage the new cases.

But, Northey said, the state could call for the National Guard's assistance with added outbreaks. No new facilities tested positive for avian influenza Tuesday.

"We're ramping up, the USDA is ramping up, to meet the need," Mike Naig, Iowa's deputy secretary of agriculture, said Tuesday.

Four state agencies are assisting with efforts, and two more agencies are joining.

"The USDA continues to pull in additional resources, additional people to support the effort," he said. "It's almost daily that the agency is making requests to send more people."

Earlier this week, the Minnesota State Emergency Operations Center called on the National Guard to deliver 30 soldiers and 15 military water trucks for foaming systems used to cull flocks on infected farms. Officials also are considering asking the National Guard to use a mobile laboratory that would provide additional testing resources and speed the process.

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Kelly said dealing with an infected barn — everything from testing and depopulating to cleaning and getting the facility back up and running again — is a time-intensive process.

At one point, the state had an influx of trailers that help generate the foam, but didn't have enough units with the water needed to produce it — and water units the state had contracted with wouldn't be available to fully meet the demand for a few days.

The National Guard, with help from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, stepped in. While the National Guard has since been put on standby, Guard members "are on short recall" in case they are needed again, Kelly said.

"It takes a lot of water and a lot of logical operational planning, especially if you get into a significant number of barns," said Kelly, who ensures coordination of state agency preparedness and emergency responses to all types of disasters. "When you have dozens of barns, and you are rolling from day to day to day, it really is a planning- and logistics-intensive operation so we can keep up and support the ag community."

Kelly estimated it can take more than 20,000 gallons of water to create enough foam to depopulate a single barn.

"It's good thing we got 10,000 lakes in Minnesota because that is a lot of water," he said.

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In Wisconsin, the National Guard was called in with the first outbreak to help disinfect trucks and large vehicles.

"We realized quickly that our request for resources from USDA were going to be rather slow, given the number of responses they were taking care of in Minnesota," said Raechelle Cline, spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. "We decided we have the resources right here with the National Guard."

Cline said the state had to declare an emergency to get assistance. Fourteen Guard members are still helping the first facility disinfect vehicles.

Wisconsin has had about 1.2 million birds infected.

Jimmy Centers, a spokesman for Gov. Terry Branstad, said the governor would consider declaring an emergency if requested. But he added that Iowa doesn't need a declaration to get resources to the avian influenza outbreaks.

The state's departments of Natural Resources, Public Health, Inspections and Appeals, and Human Services, plus Iowa Homeland Security, are responding.

Naig said a team with about 20 to 25 members is working through the quarantined areas around the five new infected sites to identify backyard poultry flocks for testing. Commercial poultry operations near an infected site are immediately notified to begin testing and quarantine the facility.

The surveillance crews looking for domestic flocks move quickly from one 6.2-mile quarantined circle to the next, he said. Another ag team tests the birds.

Drake University law professor Neil Hamilton said most public officials would err on the side of calling the National Guard "just because of the nature of the growing threat and the fact that you want to do everything you can to tamp it down as soon as you can."

Hamilton said that while it's different than the disasters that most people think of, like a tornado or flood, it's a disaster in its own way.

"By gosh, when the state has 25 percent of the nation's egg population, and it's one of our major parts of agriculture, I don't see who would criticize the idea of bringing out the Guard if there is a role they can play," Hamilton said.

Bill Hartmann, executive director of the Minnesota Board of Animal Health, said state and federal officials monitoring bird flu have made changes to improve and quicken their response times as the outbreak has gone on.

State officials in Minnesota also are working on indoor composting to try to cut down on any spread of virus outside of the farm and then doing surveillance around the infected farms to make sure it hasn't spread.

That approach also is being taken at Sunrise Farms in Osceola County, with at least a third of the total 3.8 million infected hens. On Monday, the state said a commercial egg-laying facility in Sioux County also has an estimated 3.8 million infected hens. They're the largest cases in the nation.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota are studying infected farms, along with those that have avoided the disease, to identify possible risk factors, Hartmann said.

"This is a new virus. We don't know a good deal about it, so we're learning as we go, but we're optimistic that we could see a downturn soon" in part because of the warmer weather, Hartmann said. "That is the very million-dollar question: How do we keep preventing it? Right now we are just responding to it because we don't how to prevent it."

Experts believe avian influenza is spread when migratory birds such as ducks and geese leave their droppings on farms. The USDA is still working to figure out how the virus is spreading despite protective measures. Some have speculated that farm workers are unknowingly transporting bird flu or it is spreading on dust or bird feathers blown by the wind.

Across the Midwest, poultry farmers and government officials are hoping to get better information about how the disease is being transmitted.

"All of us want to believe that transmission is preventable," said Randy Olson, executive director of the Iowa Poultry Association. "However, despite these farms employing precautionary measures to prevent the disease to their farms, they've been infected. And it's causing a lot of questions."

Naig, Iowa's deputy secretary of agriculture, said it's a priority for USDA to determine "how this disease spreads and what can be done to prevent it."

Officials have stressed the threat to humans from avian influenza H5N2 is low. No human infections with the virus have ever been detected, and there is no reported food safety risk for consumers.

Dermot Hayes, an economist at Iowa State University, estimated that for every million egg-laying hens that are lost, egg prices in Iowa and across the United States increase by about 1.6 percent. Iowa has about 60 million hens and supplies almost 1 in every 5 eggs consumed in the United States.

Hayes said the ability for poultry operations to quickly rebuild their flocks, compared with cattle or hogs, could allow the egg and poultry industries in Iowa to quickly recover once the last outbreak occurs.

"I do not think it damages the industry long term, but it will prompt us to improve our biosecurity," he said.