Wisconsin has experienced its first case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) of 2024.
According to information from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the presence of HPAI was confirmed in a flock of commercial meat turkeys in Washburn County on January 5. There were 41,000 birds involved.
This detection of HPAI is the first time the virus has appeared in the state since December 8, 2023. Wisconsin had five flocks affected by HPAI in 2023 and 11 flocks affected in 2022.
This is the first case of HPAI to occur in Washburn County during the 2022-24 outbreak.
With this new detection of HPAI, Wisconsin becomes the third state to have a flock infected in 2024. On December 3, the presence of HPAI was confirmed in three commercial poultry operations in California, involving broilers and layer pullets. One day later, the virus was confirmed in a commercial layer pullet flock in Kansas. Collectively, those four flocks involved more than 1.5 million chickens.
APHIS has also reported three confirmed cases of HPAI in backyard poultry in the United States in 2024, but in accordance with standards set by the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), those cases should not have any impact on international poultry trade.
So far in 2024, Canada has only had one instance of HPAI being confirmed in a commercial poultry operation, with that case being confirmed January 3 in Papineau Regional County Municipality, Quebec.
To learn more about HPAI cases in commercial poultry flocks in the United States, Mexico and Canada, see an interactive map on WATTPoultry.com.
View our continuing coverage of the global avian influenza situation.
