H5N1 Avian Flu Turns Up In US Poultry On Indiana Turkey Farm

Feb 14, 2022

Animal health officials in Indiana today reported a highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu outbreak at a turkey farm, marking the first appearance of high-path avian flu in US poultry since 2020 and following dozens of recent detections in waterfowl on the East Coast.

US poultry on Indiana turkey farm

The Indiana Board of Animal Health (IBAH) said the outbreak occurred at a commercial turkey farm in Dubois County, which is located in the southwest corner of the state. The birds were tested after about 100 birds died, the group said in an alert. The farm is under quarantine, and the IBAH is working with producers to monitor flocks statewide.

On its website, the IBAH said the facility housed 29,000 turkeys and that the H5N1 findings were confirmed on Feb 8.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) also announced today that it has confirmed highly pathogenic avian influenza in a turkey flock in Dubois County—quite likely the same flock. It added that samples tested positive at Purdue University with follow-up confirmation testing done at the APHIS National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. Virus isolation is under way.

Birds on the property were depopulated and will not enter the food chain, according to APHIS.

The USDA said state and federal animal health officials, as part of an established response plan, are conducting additional surveillance and testing in the area. It urged all poultry producers to review their biosecurity practices.

Outbreak follows waterfowl detections

Since the first of the year, surveillance has identified the Eurasian H5N1 strain in waterfowl in several East Coast states. Similar events were reported in poultry and wild birds in Canada's Nova Scotia and Newfoundland provinces. The same virus has fueled outbreaks in other parts of the world, leading to large poultry losses, especially in Europe.

The United States' last highly pathogenic avian flu outbreak in poultry occurred in 2020 and involved the H7N3 strain, which was part of activity that also involved a low-pathogenic form of the virus that hit turkey farms in North Carolina and South Carolina. Indiana reported its last highly pathogenic avian flu outbreaks in 2016 when 11 farms, also in Dubois County, were affected by H7N8. The event led to the loss of 400,000 birds.

A large US outbreak from December 2014 to June 2015 that killed more than 50 million chickens and turkeys in 21 states involved the H5N2 and H5N8 strains.

Indiana ranks third in the country in turkey production.

Source : umn.edu

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”