PETALUMA, Calif. (KRON) – Avian or “bird” flu is hitting Bay Area poultry farms hard, with a quarter of a million birds euthanized in Sonoma County this week alone.
Mike Weber, the co-owner of Sunrise Farms in Petaluma, says around 82,000 of his egg-laying chickens had to be euthanized after birds started testing positive for Avian Flu.
“They are posing a risk to the neighboring farms, so we are sacrificing the life of these birds so we can remove the risk of spreading like a wildfire,” he said.
Weber says there are about 800,000 chickens left at the farm, but just down the street from him, a duck farm lost all 170,000 of its ducks due to the bird flu.
Wildcare is a non-profit wildlife hospital in San Rafael. Its director of animal care, Melanie Piazza, has been monitoring the spread of the bird flu. She believes it’s coming from wild birds migrating south for the winter.
“It’s so contagious. It’s harder to stop and it’s spreading faster and there’s more reservoirs available to spread it,” Piazza said.
Avian flu causes birds to have coughing, sneezing, and a lack of oxygen, according to Laura Bradley with the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Her agency is responsible for confirming positive cases, but she says there is a very low risk of birds spreading the flu to humans.
“Currently with the CDC, they have said that it’s not a human threat. It’s more of a poultry threat,” she said.
There is not much of a chance of you getting sick, but farmers like Weber say your wallet will feel it this holiday season. He predicts egg prices will go up at the grocery store because of the loss of poultry in the Bay Area.
“The eggs are going to come in from out of state or from some other place. They just aren’t going to come from here because we just don’t have the birds,” he said.
from KRON4 https://ift.tt/y1C6530
No comments:
Post a Comment