(Des Moines) The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) have detected a case of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) in O’Brien County, Iowa. Final confirmatory testing is pending at the National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL) in Ames.
The affected farm is a dairy herd, and this is Iowa’s first reported case of HPAI within a dairy. To date, APHIS has confirmed over 80 dairy cases on farms in South Dakota, Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, Kansas, Idaho and Colorado.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship will soon be announcing additional response measures.
Additionally, genomic sequencing of the virus that was detected at the Sioux County farm announced on May 28 was determined by the NVSL in Ames to be consistent with the variant identified in affected dairies in other states. Sequencing is not yet completed on the virus detected at a recent turkey flock in Cherokee County or this dairy in O’Brien County. Epidemiological investigations are ongoing to try to determine how the virus was introduced into the flocks and herd.
