The H5 avian flu outbreak began in Dubois County. Now a farm in another county has had a flu outbreak.
The Indiana Board of Animal Health confirms one turkey farm in Greene County tested positive for the same H5 avian flu that infected the farms in Dubois. Greene County is about 60 miles north of Dubois. Denise Spears, Public Information Director for the Indiana State Board of Animal Health, says the farms are not related.
Spears explains to WIBC News, “to our knowledge, these farms are not related in any way as far as their production practices go. So that’s not what’s suspected.”
The board was informed by a veterinarian that works with the Greene County farm that geese were in the area. Spears says geese could be the suspect behind this poultry problem.
“[And] we do know that the H5N1 virus is carried by wild migratory waterfowl,” Spears explains, “so it wouldn’t be uncommon for that to be the source of bringing the virus onto a farm.”
Spears says this virus is a challenging issue because the virus simply shouldn’t be in Indiana, or the country for that matter. It has to come from somewhere else.
Spears explains, “it’s considered a foreign animal disease to us here in the United States, when we get a highly pathogenic version of the virus. So that’s why we have to take such drastic action about it because this is not something that should be here.”
Spears says the Board of Animal Health will set up essentially the same operation in Greene County as in Dubois. a ten kilometer zone has been established around the infected farm. All commercial poultry farms in the zone will go through a thorough cleaning process and remain under quarantine for several weeks. Over 60,000 birds at the infected farm have been “depopulated.” That brings the total number of infected turkeys is now over 100,000.
As for the quarantined Dubois County farms, it’s business as usual.
