SIOUX CENTER, Iowa--Deadly avian flu viruses have now affected more than 33 million turkeys, chickens and ducks in more than a dozen states since December. The toll at Center Fresh farms alone accounts for nearly 17 percent of the nation’s poultry that has either been killed by bird flu or is being euthanized to prevent its spread.

While farmers in Asia and elsewhere have had to grapple with avian flu epidemics, no farmers in the United States have ever confronted a health crisis among livestock like this one, which seemed to travel along migratory bird pathways from the Pacific Northwest to the Midwestern states.

Almost every day brings confirmation by the Agriculture Department that at least another hundred thousand or so birds must be destroyed; some days, the number exceeds several million.

Mounds and mounds of carcasses have piled up in vast barns here in the northwestern corner of the state, where farmers and officials have been appealing for help to deal with disposal of such a vast number of flocks.

Workers wearing masks and protective gear have scrambled to clear the barns, but it is a painstaking process. In these close-knit towns that include many descendants of the area’s original Dutch settlers, some farmers have resorted to burying dead birds in hurriedly dug trenches on their own land, while officials weighed using landfills and mobile incinerators.

Iowa, where one in every five eggs consumed in the country is laid, has been the hardest hit: More than 40 percent of its egg-laying hens are dead or dying. Many are in this region, where barns house up to half a million birds in cages stacked to the rafters. The high density of these egg farms helps to explain why the flu, which can kill 90 percent or more of a flock within 48 hours, is decimating more birds in Iowa than in other states.

Some hens here were still laying eggs in barns that had yet to be emptied, and those eggs were being sold as a liquid product after undergoing a federally required extra pasteurization step.

But the long-term economic impact of the epidemic is still being assessed, especially since countries like China, Japan and Mexico have banned poultry imports from the United States.

Some analysts say consumers are probably seeing some price increases, not only for cartons of eggs but also for products that contain so-called liquid eggs, which are used in everything from mayonnaise to cake mix and are a major product of Iowa’s poultry industry.

About 90 percent of the more than 25 million chickens that are being destroyed in Iowa produced liquid eggs, and already the wholesale price for those eggs nationwide has nearly doubled from late April. It hit $1.23 a dozen on Wednesday, up from 63 cents a dozen on April 22, according to Rick Brown, executive vice president and an egg specialist at Urner Barry, a market research publisher. The federal Department of Agriculture’s weekly report, however, was more cautious in its estimates of rising shell egg prices, but suggested that sharp increases for liquid eggs may be in the offing.

Major companies that use liquid eggs have started to warn that they may run short, which will impede sales and raise prices for products like cake mixes and ice cream. Nestlé, for instance, which makes Dreyers, Edys and Häagen-Dazs ice creams, as well as other products that incorporate eggs, said it had been discussing its options.

Some of those ice creams are made south of here in Le Mars, which calls itself “the ice cream capital of the world.” “And summer’s right around the corner,” said Mark Bohner, regional director in the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation’s office there. “When something like this hits, the scope of its impact may not always be so obvious, but it’s big.”

Known as “chicken central,” Sioux County ranks 13th in the country in the amount of revenue generated by agriculture, about $1.6 billion in 2012, after counties producing high-value fruit, vegetable and nut crops in California, Colorado and Washington State.

The livestock losses also affect a wide range of support businesses, ranging from bank lenders and insurers to trucking operations, feed mills and farmers. “It’s devastating to the producers and devastating to this whole area,” said Mark Sybesma, chairman of the Sioux County Board of Supervisors.

After the egg producers themselves, the business most immediately hit by the crisis is that of breeding the chicks and pullets that become laying hens. Center Fresh, for instance, buys several hundred thousand chicks a month.

Just this week, federal lawmakers from Iowa called on the Agriculture Department to do more to help farmers with the culling and disposal of birds. The federal agency has made tens of millions of dollars available for assistance, and noted that it is deploying hundreds of staff members, including 85 in Iowa.

The state’s governor recently declared a state of emergency, and has now ordered up mobile incinerators to travel from farm to farm to help reduce the waste.

Once the barns are cleared and disinfected, agricultural officials take environmental samples that involve a 21-day testing process. Once the tests come back negative, officials said, farmers can resume using the barns.

Still, as farmers and their employees double down on biosecurity measures at the big farms and work to clean the vast barns for new flocks, local businessmen return nearly every weekday morning to their favorite breakfast spot to trade theories on why bird flu keeps spreading. While most experts blame migrating wild fowl for the spread of the viruses, people still wonder if they were being spread more rapidly in the Midwest by dust or rodents in barns, or if some strains had become airborne.

“How come it hasn’t hit Nebraska?” Wayne Meerdink asked last week. “They have chickens in Nebraska, don’t they?”

Less than a week later, on Tuesday, Nebraska reported its first suspected infection, on a farm of more than a million chickens. (Source: The New York Times)

Story Date: May 15, 2015