Avian Flu Outbreak Threatening U.S. Poultry and Egg Supplies

The avian flu continues to rampage across the Midwest ravaging farms in its path placing suppliers of both poultry and eggs in crisis mode.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture continues to receive reports about outbreaks and more farms that has now resulted in a total of 187 outbreaks affecting almost 42.2 million birds.

Farms in Iowa, Minnesota, Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kansas, Oregon, Missouri, Washington and California have been affected by the outbreak that began at the end of 2014.  In Iowa, the country's largest producer of eggs, the USDA received more than 60 detection reports on April 20 alone that covered an estimated 28.1 million birds.

The outbreak across all of these states has resulted in skyrocketing prices for both chicken and eggs.  However, Alex Melton, a poultry economist with the USDA, said that the price of eggs is starting to level out.

"When there is a scare in any sort of national market for any commodity, you often see a sharp increase in price followed by a tapering as people are able to take more stock and get more information," says Melton.

Bird flu affects both wild and domesticated birds including chickens, turkeys, ducks and seagulls.  It spreads among flocks when healthy birds come into contact with sick birds as well as through contact with contaminated farming equipment.  In some cases, they have found the virus on the outer surfaces of eggshells from infected birds and the contagious strains can even become airborne.

Like human influenza, there are many strains of this virus with one of the most deadly and infectious strains being responsible for this latest outbreak of the flu in bird populations.  This latest outbreak is actually a combination of two viruses with mixed origins - the H5N2 and the new H5N1 that are combinations of Asia's H5N8 and North American viruses.

According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the avian influenza virus isn't typically a threat to humans.  However, some researchers believe this latest version of the virus may only be a few mutations away from becoming a threat to humans as well as birds.

Derek Smith, a professor of infectious disease informatics at Cambridge University, said that if the H5N1 virus were to mutate and infect humans, the results could be as devastating as the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 that killed approximately 50 million people across the world.