The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) officially confirmed the presence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in a Sioux City, Iowa layer flock and reported on the sizes of turkey flocks with HPAI located in Stearns County, Michigan.
The case, reported by APHIS on May 28, impacted 4,217,400 birds.
Iowa Department of Agriculture & Land Stewardship (IDALS) initially reported the HPAI case in Sioux City, Iowa, but did not share the size of the flock affected.
Iowa poultry producers and dairy farmers should bolster biosecurity programs and protocols to protect against HPAI, IDALS recommended. The agency also noted that the threat to humans remains low.
APHIS also confirmed the sizes of two meat bird turkey flocks in Stearns County, Minnesota that were reported to have HPAI on May 21. The first flock included 17,100 birds, while the second contained 7,000 birds.
First HPAI case in 2024
The HPAI case is the first in the state for 2024. In 2023, Iowa lost 2,894,200 birds to HPAI, down from 15.9 million in 2022. Two of the flocks lost in 2023 involved more than 1 million birds, with the largest involving 1.6 million.
Prior to the most recent Sioux County case, the last time HPAI was reported in Iowa was November 29, 2023. That case impacted 1.6 million hens, also in Sioux County.
That was the second egg operation in Iowa to be struck by HPAI in 2023, with the other case being confirmed on November 14, 2023. The state has also had four commercial turkey flocks affected by HPAI last year.
To learn more about HPAI cases in commercial poultry flocks in the United States, Mexico and Canada, see an interactive map on WATTPoultry.com.
View our continuing coverage of the global avian influenza situation.
