Ongoing bird flu outbreaks continue to ravage commercial poultry flocks in Indiana and Ohio, where two counties issued emergency declarations last week. But Tennessee appears to be faring better, at least for now.
“It’s not that we have not been affected, but we have not been affected by avian influenza near as much as what some other states have,” said Tom Tabler, statewide poultry extension specialist at the University of Tennessee.
The current outbreak of the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus has been detected in wild, commercial and backyard flocks since February 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus is deadly to chickens and turkeys and is typically spread by wild migratory birds.
Under current U.S. Department of Agriculture policy, if one bird tests positive in a commercial flock or backyard coop, the entire flock must be euthanized in an effort to stop the spread, Tabler said. Nearly 163 million birds have been affected across the U.S. since early 2022, including 9 million birds in Ohio within the past month.
Tennessee has seen 456,000 birds affected since the outbreak began in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s data dashboard. The majority of those birds were from five commercial flocks.