British Columbia poultry farms are particularly vulnerable to highly pathenogenic avian influenza due to the annual migration of waterfowl through the Fraser Valley.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will soon begin testing bulk raw milk across the country for bird flu, a significant expansion of the agency's efforts to stifle the rapid spread of the virus, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Reuters.
Bird flu has been spreading fast among poultry in the European Union this season, raising concerns of a repeat of previous crises that led to the deaths of tens of millions of poultry in the bloc and fears that it could spread to humans.
H5N1 bird flu was confirmed in a pig on a backyard farm in Oregon, the first detection of the virus in swine in the country, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Wednesday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday confirmed two of the four presumptive positive bird flu cases among poultry farm workers in Washington state.
British Columbia has three new cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) among commercial poultry flocks in the Abbotsford and Chilliwack areas.
There are no active outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza among Canadian poultry farms, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said today.
Bird flu is presumed to have infected four poultry workers in Washington state, making it the sixth U.S. state to identify human cases this year, according to the Washington State Department of Health.
Cows in California are dying at much higher rates from bird flu than in other affected states, industry and veterinary experts said, and some carcasses have been left rotting in the sun as rendering plants struggle to process all the dead animals.
U.S. and California health officials confirmed two new cases of H5N1 bird flu in dairy farm workers in the state on Friday, bringing the total of infected dairy workers in that state to six, and the total of human cases nationwide this year to 20.