A highly contagious strain of bird flu — deadly to poultry and wild birds — was confirmed this week in a commercial chicken facility in Northwest Georgia’s Gordon County, the Georgia Department of Agriculture announced Friday.
The virus responsible, known as Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, has ravaged wild birds, commercial poultry and backyard flocks in the U.S. since February 2022, killing more than 182 million birds nationwide. Strains of the virus have also infected mammals, including dairy cattle in many states, but Georgia has not had any confirmed cattle cases.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said the risk to humans from H5N1 is low, but public health officials fear the virus has the potential to morph into a pandemic. In the meantime, it has also caused widespread disruption to poultry, egg and dairy farms in other states.
The Gordon County facility where the virus was detected housed 140,000 chickens in multiple houses, the GDA said. All will be euthanized to contain the spread.
The agency did not identify the company where the case occurred.
The detection is the third in a commercial poultry facility in Georgia this year, but the first since January. Those January cases, which occurred in Northeast Georgia’s Elbert County, led to the neutralization of 175,000 chickens.
Last month, the virus also turned up in a backyard flock in metro Atlanta, and responders culled 45 birds to contain the spread — a mix of turkey, geese and chickens. Georgia has also seen sporadic confirmed cases in wild birds like bald eagles, vultures and species of waterfowl, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
The GDA said the Gordon County case was detected after the chicken producer noticed signs of the virus in his flock on Wednesday, Oct. 22. The virus can cause lethargy, loss of appetite, discolored feet and sudden death in affected birds.
On Thursday, the producer reported the symptoms to the Georgia Poultry Laboratory Network, the GDA said, and samples were collected that same day. The lab’s testing found bird flu was the culprit, a result that was confirmed by the USDA.
The GDA says it has deployed its Emergency Management and State Agricultural Response teams to the facility to “conduct depopulation, disposal, cleaning, and disinfection.” The agency said those activities are likely to continue through the weekend.
Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper said in a statement the GDA is “working around the clock to contain the spread and protect our flocks.”
“This poses a serious threat to Georgia’s #1 industry and to the thousands of Georgians whose livelihoods depend on poultry production,” Harper said. Georgia produces more broilers — chickens raised for meat — than any state in the country.
Georgia Poultry Federation President Mike Giles thanked the GDA and its partners for their “swift response.”
“The poultry industry is working closely with these partners in a coordinated response aimed at ensuring that the virus does not spread to other locations,” Giles added.
Last year, a string of developments led to concern from some animal and public health officials that the virus was mutating in ways that could allow it to spread more efficiently to mammals, including humans.
For the first time ever, bird flu was detected in dairy cattle in Texas last March. Since then, cattle in 17 other states have tested positive for the virus. No cattle in Georgia have ever tested positive.
In the U.S., there have been a total of 70 cases in humans, resulting in one death. Most of those cases occurred in people exposed to infected dairy or poultry, but human detections have tapered off so far this year: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been no human cases in the U.S. since February.
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