Avian Flu Spread in the U.S. Worries Poultry Industry
The New York Times
Though the risk to humans is low, scientists warn that outbreaks among farmed birds increase the potential for the virus to mutate and pose a threat to humans.
A highly contagious and deadly form of avian influenza has been barreling across the eastern half of the United States in recent weeks, killing both wild birds and farmed poultry and raising fears that an unchecked outbreak could prove calamitous for an industry that was devastated by a similar virus seven years ago.
Since early January, when it began killing chickens in northeast Canada, the virus has been identified in migratory waterfowl from Florida to Maine, and has infected backyard chickens in Virginia and New York and sickened thousands of turkeys in Kentucky and Indiana, prompting mass cullings and import bans.
On Wednesday, federal officials announced that the virus, a so-called highly pathogenic avian influenza, had been found in a Delaware commercial chicken farm on the Delmarva Peninsula, home to one of the country’s largest concentrations of poultry farms.
