Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has stricken a commercial gamebird operation in York County, Nebraska, state and federal agencies announced.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the flock included 159,500 birds, and the presence of HPAI was confirmed on October 4.
Dr. Roger Dudley, state veterinarian with the Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA), announced that this flock, as well as a backyard flock in Box Butte County, are being humanely depopulated and the carcasses are being disposed of in an approved manner.
NDA is establishing a 6.2-mile control zone, as is USDA policy, around the affected premises.
Nebraska has now had five commercial operations affected by HPAI in 2022, with the previously most recent case being confirmed on April 27. Affected were two broiler operations in Butler County and one layer flock apiece in Knox and Dixon counties. The control areas surrounding those four cases have all since been released.
So far in 2022, approximately 5 million birds in Nebraska have been affected by HPAI.
On the same day APHIS announced the Nebraska cases, it also reported a case of HPAI in a backyard flock in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. Prior to this, there had been no confirmed cases of the virus in commercial or backyard poultry, or in wild birds, in the state.
HPAI infections in backyard flocks or wild birds should not have an impact on international poultry trade, according to standards set by the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH).
To learn more about HPAI cases in commercial poultry flocks in the United States and Canada, see an interactive map on WATTPoultry.com.
Read our ongoing coverage of the global avian influenza outbreak.
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