University Place

Hi. Welcome to the Barron Area Community Center. My name is Mary Pardee. I am the 4-H Youth Development Educator here in Barron County with the UW Extension Cooperative Extension.

Tonight, our program is on the avian influenza outbreak here in Barron County. We have two presenters, Kelli Engen, health officer and public health manager of the Barron County Health and Human Services, and Tim Jergenson, our agriculture, horticulture, and natural resource agent with UW Extension Cooperative Extension Barron County. So, please help me welcome our speakers.

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Good evening. Thank you for coming out tonight. Thank you for having us. We have had a very busy spring here in Barron County with the outbreak of avian influenza.

Tim Jergenson, from UW Extension, and myself have gained a really nice partnership with this unfortunate incident that we have experienced. And we've done this presentation a few times, and we switched it up a little bit for all the watchers out there. We'll start with a little map here that came from, I notice this isn't the most current map, this came off a blog from the poultry production. This just gives our people a little idea about what's going on and where these avian influenza outbreaks have occurred.

The red indicates commercial poultry operations. Blue is wild. Green is domestic. Orange is backyard flocks.

And you can see that interstate of Wisconsin we have had an avian influenza backyard flock be hit. This is just the numbers slide. There have been 22, or, I'm sorry, 223 detections reported, birds affected. The first detection actually started in December of 2014, and, to date, the last detection was June 17th of 2015.

Okay, this is my little chance to talk. I'm a nurse by trade, and I like to talk a little bit about influenza in general. Influenza is a virus that is a respiratory illness. A lot of people think that, oh, I had the flu.

Well, the flu is not stomach symptoms that have you in the bathroom for hours on end. True influenza, or the flu, is actually a respiratory illness. So, this is where I like to do my little teaching of what influenza truly is. So, what do we do about this?

There are treatments for influenza virus. Tamiflu is a drug that is fairly new to the market and, given at early onset of the disease, can be pretty effective against symptoms. Prevention of seasonal flu, we in public health are big, we encourage people to wash their hands daily, stay home when they're sick, and get vaccinated. That's kind of our message during the seasonal flu season.

So since this wasn't our typical seasonal flu, this was avian influenza that we found out, I'm going to talk a little bit about the history here. In 1997, the World Health Organization actually established reporting guidelines for avian influenza. Avian influenza is not new. It's new to this area of the country.

There were outbreaks of avian influenza in 2002, 2003, and 2004. None of those were in Wisconsin. They were in Texas and New York and other parts of the United States. So, we get into this big typing of flu, and I always tell people I'm not the expert.

I'm not an epidemiologist. I'm a public health nurse, so don't ask me how they come up with these typings but they do.

There are two types of avian influenza

HPAI, which is high pathogen, and a low pathogen avian influenza. And within those two types there are subtypes. We are talking a little bit today, the particular type that we see in North America is H5N1, and our specific strain here was H5N2. AI is spread, we all know viruses live in feces, saliva, respiratory secretions.

Most cases of the avian influenza will develop within three to seven days of exposure to infected birds. Each new strains of AI appear throughout the world on different virus every year. So, people say, well, public health, you guys had something to do with this avian influenza thing that went around in Barron County? And we said yes, we do.

Unfortunately because of attacks that have been made on our country and preparedness efforts have been bolstered and boosted and public health departments have been given some funding to be prepared in instances of exactly this. Pandemic or endemic diseases, communicable diseases, preparedness for being ready for a disaster such as a tornado, a human or natural disaster. So, we listened to our friends at the State Health Department, our colleagues, our experts where the epidemiologists work, and their recommendations were that we needed to get a good idea of the employees from the industry where avian influenza was detected in our area. So, my key message is always the risk to humans is very low.

We didn't have any cases of avian influenza within humans, but the potential is there. So that is why we monitor the workers of the industry for 10 days after their last exposure. We offer them prophylaxis of Tamiflu, and we watch for signs and symptoms of a flu virus. Responding to the AI outbreak.

I think I'm going to hand this off to Tim Jergenson. Normally, we kind of team this. So... Thank you, Kelli.

I think it's important as we understand and learn more about avian influenza that there are protocols within the industry on these farms where these diseases are found, and I'd like to spend a little bit of time at this point talking about what some of those protocols are. If we understand the industry a little bit, then it helps us understand how this disease is spread and some of the things that we can use to deal with it. Research has shown that the most effective way to control the spread of avian influenza is by depopulating the disease, the birds I should say, inside these barns. And so that's the route that has been taken this season as we look at how this disease is being handled on the individual farms where it has propped up.

And so, once the birds inside these barns, and you can see an example of the barn down in the lower right-hand corner of this, these barns will contain anywhere from 11,000 to 15,000 birds. So, one sick bird in one of those barns can expose a large number. So the entire barn is depopulated, and then the birds are composted within the barn. This does a couple of things.

It controls the spread of the disease because the birds remain in the barn, and then the carcasses are mixed with wood chips to create a rapid composting process. And then, also because the birds are remaining in the barn, they're not subject to the elements or scavengers or anything like that that could potentially spread the disease. One of the things that is important to understand about avian influenza, it's not a particularly hardy virus in terms of how it relates to temperature. So once the composting begins, the goal is to reach 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and that deactivates or kills the virus.

That's an important factor because when you look at composting, even for backyard composters, it's not that difficult to get up to 160 or 165 degrees in a compost pile. So we find that composting is a very effective method of controlling this disease. So, this is the steps that are taken when the disease is confirmed on a poultry operation. First of all, confirm the disease through lab tests.

So, the industry, as Kelli mentioned, this isn't a real secret to them. Avian influenza has been around before so they had some idea of what the symptoms would be. They were monitoring that, and, particularly in Wisconsin, we'd seen this disease cropping up in some of our neighboring states, so the industry was preparing for this and scouting for this disease all along. So once the disease is confirmed, those barns are quarantined, and then Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, with the help of the US Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, move in to support and partner with the industry.

The composted remains are, as I said, stay in the barn for about 30 days. During that time, surveillance and sampling of the composting will occur, and they're taking temperatures. There are Wisconsin Department of Ag officials and US Department of Ag officials on-site doing the monitoring. Once that composting is complete, and it's about 30 days, then the composted remains are moved outside of the barn and stacked on the premises but away from the buildings.

The buildings are then cleaned and disinfected. And, again, there's continuing environmental sampling going on as these buildings go through a 21-day rest period. Now, that period may be longer than 21 days depending on the environmental sampling. And so then the next step is to release the quarantine when all the parties involved are satisfied that disease no longer resides inside that building.

Then the buildings are restocked with poultry, and the process begins to bring this unit back into production. Eventually, the composted remains will be land spread at an appropriate time. Depending on the time of the year, they're actively growing crops in the field, so we can't land spread the remains at that time. And the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources works closely with the industry and gives them the go ahead of when and where those composted remains can be spread.

Here is an example of some of the activity that is going on during this process when these barns are being quarantined. All of the trucks coming in, trucks going out, are being cleaned. The people that are working on those facilities are following very strict biosecurity methods to protect themselves and also protect from the disease spreading to another facility So, when we look at Wisconsin, it's important to understand the impact that this disease has had. There have been 10 Wisconsin farms that have avian influenza detects during the spring and the summer of 2015.

Please understand, we have over 10,000 known registered poultry operations in Wisconsin. So, while it's devastating to have this disease on a particular farm, it's still a very small percentage of the actual farms, poultry farms, that exist in Wisconsin. Now, of those 10 farms, six of them were commercial turkey operations, five of which were in Barron County, one in Chippewa County. There were three commercial chicken operations in Jefferson County, Wisconsin.

And then there was one small backyard flock in Juneau County. So it totaled over 650,000 turkeys that were affected. Nearly 42,000 turkey hatching eggs had to be destroyed, and over 1.1 million chickens were depopulated in Wisconsin. However, that pales in comparison with some of our neighbors.

If you look at this chart, you will see that Iowa had over 31,000, excuse me, 31 million birds that had to be depopulated. Most of those were turkeys, but some were egg laying hens. Minnesota, the largest turkey producing state in the United States, was really hit hard with over 105 farms affected, and nearly nine million birds had to be destroyed. You see Nebraska.

Wisconsin fits in there in the top five, and South Dakota being the other state that was very high. And then a number of other states were affected but at much lower numbers. This is a map of the United States that shows where the layer operations are. These blue dots indicate where chicken laying operations are.

I want to show you this because look where the concentration is. Most of it is east of the Mississippi or just closely west of it. So the Upper Midwest and then some on the east coast. Keep that concentration in mind.

Here is a concentration of the turkey industry in the United States. Notice, again, Minnesota being the leading state. Wisconsin's turkey population is up in the northwestern part of the state, primarily Barron County. But, also, it goes down and follows the Mississippi River.

We have some on the east coast. Again, understanding how this disease is spread helps to understand where the concentration of the poultry industry in the United States is. Let's take a look now at the flyways, the major wildlife waterfowl flyways in the United States. And if you notice, the Mississippi flyway covers most of the turkey producing states in the United States, or at least the highest concentration of it, and many of the highest concentrated areas where layer, chicken layers are, both in the Mississippi flyway as well as the Atlantic flyway.

Why do I share that information with you? Because, at this point, the working hypothesis is that this disease is being spread by migrating waterfowl beginning in the spring. Well, if you look at when was this disease first determined, as Kelli mentioned, it started in December, but most of the detects were in April and early May in the Midwest, just at the time that waterfowl were migrating. So, the report, final report was issued by the US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in June of this year, and one of the things that they found, they are still trying to fully understand all of the possible pathways.

But we still believe that wild waterfowl, domestic waterfowl, migrating are one of the primary carriers. They may not have been the only one, but we believe that they're the primary one. However, once the avian influenza comes into a community or to an area in a state, there's still some possibilities that we don't quite understand of how it's spreading from farm to farm. As Kelli mentioned, it can be spread through manure or respiratory methods of distribution.

So it's potentially possible that workers are carrying the disease from one barn to another on their boots or on their shoes. That's why biosecurity is such an important issue. But we also believe that winds or other environmental factors are affecting the spread of this disease. If you note, in the spring, in the Midwest, as the snowmelt leaves, we often have high winds.

And there is some evidence that high winds are carrying this disease from barn to barn or farm to farm once it arrives in the community. So, if you're one of those small flocks, which that's an important part of your diet, you raise chickens, small flocks, those are important contributions through eggs and meat and sometimes provide an important part of a family's income. So we want to focus a little bit of time talking about how small farm backyard flocks can be protected. Remember, one of the flocks in Wisconsin that had this disease was a small backyard flock.

In Iowa, I believe about six or 10 of the detects were small backyard flocks. So it can happen in large flocks as well as small. The reason the numbers are so high in the commercial industry is, remember I said there's somewhere between 10,000 and maybe 15,000 birds in one building? If just one bird is sick, they depopulate the entire building.

So that's why we get these really high numbers in the commercial industry, part of the poultry industry. It doesn't mean all those birds died of the disease. In fact, most of them were healthy, but they had been exposed to it so depopulating is one method of control. So, if you're a backyard home poultry raiser, follow good biosecurity practices.

In other words, don't visit farms that already have the disease. Make sure that you're following good biosecurity practices in terms of changing your shoes, cleaning your shoes and so on. Don't bring the disease home by going out and buying birds from flocks that you're not sure what their production history is. Don't share equipment with infected farms or farms that you think may have been exposed in some other way.

And then know the warning signs. Become familiar with the symptoms of this disease, and once you believe you may have some of the symptoms in your flock, report it right away to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, and we have an 800 number for that. So, what are some of the symptoms? Well, some are somewhat generic.

A lack of energy or an appetite. But if you're monitoring your birds on a daily basis, you'll begin to see this. Some swelling of the eyelids and so on. Some purple discoloration.

Notice the turkeys down here. That's what healthy poultry should look like. A rich, deep red color on their waddles, combs, and so on. It is a respiratory disease, so watch your poultry for showing any signs of any respiratory diseases.

And, unfortunately, one of the most common symptoms of this particular disease is sudden death. And we've had that reported on a number of the flocks. So, again, you monitor those flocks on a regular basis and keep watching for these symptoms. Again, there's a lot of help out there.

Department of Agriculture, and we have some phone numbers and websites in which you can get a lot of your questions answered. And, again, any suspect bird, report it right away. So with that, we would entertain any questions that you may have about avian influenza and the impact that it might have.

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