United States – Over 4 million chickens in Iowa have been infected with bird flu, and following the outbreak at a large egg farm, they will all have to be slaughtered.
Widespread Impact and Dairy Cattle Concerns
It will take workers some time to exterminate 4.2 million chickens after the disease was discovered on a Sioux County, Iowa farm. This makes it a years-long disease spreading that is now also affecting dairy cattle. Last week, the virus was identified in an egg farm near Minneapolis, Minnesota, resulting in the euthanasia of roughly 1.4 million chickens.
Continued Spread and Concerns
Since the outbreak started in 2022, about 34 million birds have been affected and lost, per statistics from the U. S. Department of Agriculture.
While bird flu has become almost a seasonal affair with poultry, the transmission to cattle has added to people’s concerns about the flu. The second dairy farmworker tested positive for bird flu, and both beef and milk were positive in May. They are found to be prevalent in dairy cattle farms in nine states.
Health and agriculture officials have stressed that there is no significant danger to the citizens. The US Department of Agriculture soon announced that meat from a single affected dairy cow was banned from the country’s food chain and beef is safe for consumption.
Heightened Vigilance and Cross-Species Transmission
Cross-sectional exploration raises the rate of people exposed to infected animals. The three people with a confirmed infection in the United States were a man who operated a dairy, a woman who worked in a dairy, and a man who worked to butcher infected poultry.