More than four million chickens set to be culled as United States battles worst bird flu outbreak

More than four million chickens will be culled by the farmers in Iowa, United States as the country battlesone of the worst bird flu outbreaks in its history.

A case of highly pathogenic and deadly bird flu has been detected at a large egg farm among egg-laying chicken flock in Iowa and has affected 4.2 million birds, announced the state on Tuesday (May 28).

This is the biggest bird flu outbreak reported in the United States since 2022. This is the first time such an outbreak has been detected in Iowa in December.

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Iowa is the biggest producer of eggs in the United States as it has almost 12 per cent of the country’s layer hens in its farms, as per the US Department of Agriculture data.

The findings were made at a time when dairy cows have been infected by the virus across the country.

Slaughtering of chickens only resort to combat flu

The farmers are now in the process of slaughtering 4.2 million chickens after the detection of the disease at a farm in Sioux County, Iowa.

The virus was last week found at an egg farm west of Minneapolis, Minnesota which led to the culling of nearly 1.4 million chickens.

Till now, nearly 92.34 million birds have been slaughtered after theoutbreakstarted in 2022, as per the US Department of Agriculture.

The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, in a statement, confirmed that the site is in Sioux County on Tuesday (May 28).

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This is the worst outbreak since the virus first affected more than 5 million birds at a farm in Iowa’s Osceola County in March 2022 when the virus first started to spread in the United States.

The virus has entered the dairy as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said they had found fragments of thebird flu virus in a few samples ofpasteurisedmilk in the United States.

The US Department of Agriculture had also found bird fluin beef for the first time.

However, the officials said that a single sickened dairycow'smeat did not have permission to enter thefood supply of the countryand hence, beef was safe to eat.

(With inputs from agencies)