The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) provided additional information concerning the presence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in commercial turkey operations in Sanpete County, Utah.
On October 9, the agency revealed on its website that two premises in the county had been affected by HPAI, but it only disclosed the number of turkeys involved at one of those premises. Today, APHIS revealed that 7,600 turkeys were affected at the second farm. The other affected flock was much larger, with 134,200 birds involved.
The presence of HPAI at both locations was confirmed on October 6.
These two instances of HPAI follow an earlier announced outbreak in Jerauld County, South Dakota, where 47,300 commercial turkeys were affected. That detection was confirmed on October 4.
Prior to that, there had not been any cases of HPAI in U.S. commercial poultry operations since April. However, the virus had resurfaced in September in commercial poultry flocks in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Sanpete County was heavily hit by HPAI in 2022, with 18 commercial turkey flocks affected. It had been nearly a year, however, since HPAI was confirmed in the county. Previously, the most recent case there was confirmed on October 25.
So far in 2023, 11 states have had HPAI detections in commercial poultry or upland gamebird operations. Those are: Utah, South Dakota, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kansas, Mississippi, California, Iowa, Virginia and Tennessee. Aside from Utah and South Dakota, control areas have been released in all of those states and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) has deemed that poultry trade can resume as normal.
In 2022, 27 states had confirmed cases of HPAI in commercial flocks.
To learn more about HPAI cases in commercial poultry flocks in the United States, Mexico and Canada, see an interactive map on WATTPoultry.com.
