Monday, May 11, 2015

Avian flu prompts 401 detour

Trucks hauling chickens and turkeys are being forced to get off Highway 401 between Cambridge and Woodstock because of a 10-kilometre quarantine zone.

The quarantine was set up after avian influenza H5N2 was confirmed on a broiler breeder chicken farm and a turkey farm located close to each other.

They were the second and third outbreaks in Oxford County. The first was on a four-barn turkey farm.

The unseasonably warm weather last week has probably eliminated most of the virus being carried by migrating ducks and geese and dropped in their feces.

The poultry industry remains on near-paranoia biosecurity protocols to prevent the virus from infecting more flocks.

The situation is far worse in the United States where Minnesota is under a state of emergency and Iowa has lost a quarter of its egg-laying hens – 3.8 million at one farm and more than five million at each of two other farms.