Minnesota is seeing a resurgence in bird flu cases this fall. The virus has infected thousands of turkeys and chickens in eight counties over just the last few weeks.
“We are trying to figure it out, for sure. I tell you, it’s so disheartening,” said Jake Vlaminck, president of the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association.
Vlaminck owns and operates Fahlun Farms near Lake Lillian. When his turkeys first got avian influenza a few years ago, he installed lasers to keep away ducks and geese — birds that spread the illness. That seemed to be working until last week, when his father-in-law noticed gulls on the property.
“He said he saw them on the roof of the barn. He scared them away. That was on a Monday morning. Come Wednesday morning, our birds started feeling sick,” said Vlaminck.
By Friday, they tested positive for bird flu, and so did one of his neighbors’ barns. All the turkeys needed to be put down to stop the spread.
“On the first site, we had to depopulate, it was about 33,000 birds. The other site we depopulated, we are closer to 38,000,” said Vlaminck. “Unfortunately, us farmers, we are no better off now than we were 10 years ago.”
From a consumer standpoint, Thanksgiving is still a month and a half away, but grocery stores don’t anticipate this latest outbreak will impact prices or supply.
“Last year they said the same thing and it didn’t affect us at all,” said Mark Alger, the meat manager at Marketplace Foods in Watertown.
In a couple of weeks, the first holiday turkeys will start arriving and he’s not expecting problems.
“We’ve got Butterball. We’ve got Best Choice, we’ve got Jennie-O,” said Alger. “It’s a busy time of the year, the holidays.”
It’ll also be a busy time for Vlaminck, as he works to get his numbers back up while pushing for a solution.
“The USDA needs to come up with a vaccine strategy and figure out what’s the best way to protect all the poultry in the U.S., protect our food supply, and still make sure we can have foreign trade,” said Vlaminck.
The USDA wants to remind people that turkey bought in grocery stores is safe to eat.
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