ST. PAUL, Minn. – A multistate outbreak of bird flu has infected turkeys on 14 farms in Minnesota, the nation's largest turkey producer, and has now been confirmed in neighboring North Dakota, officials say.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said in a release posted on its website Saturday that the highly pathogenic H5N2 avian influenza was found in a 38,000-bird commercial turkey farm in Minnesota's Kandiyohi County. It is the third flock in the county to be confirmed to have the bird flu and 14th in the state.
The latest Minnesota flock to be infected has been quarantined and will be destroyed to help stop the spread of the disease, the USDA said. Birds from the flock will not enter the food system, the department said.
Cases also have been confirmed this year in Arkansas, California, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Oregon and Washington.
The outbreak has affected flocks totaling about 1 million turkeys so far, either killed by the disease or culled to prevent it from spreading. That's a small fraction of the roughly 250 million turkeys produced on U.S. farms annually.
The first case confirmed in North Dakota, affecting a 40,000-bird flock, was logged in Dickey County along the state's border with South Dakota, which also has been hit by the avian disease, the Forum News Service reported Friday.
"There is no immediate public health concern due to this finding," the news service quoted North Dakota state epidemiologist Tracy Miller as saying. "The risk to people from H5 avian influenza infections is low despite the disease often being fatal for birds."
There have been no cases of people being infected, the USDA said, noting the Centers for Disease Control says the risk to people is low.