The U.S. government has destroyed 39 000 turkeys in Missouri due to the outbreak of avian influenza of low pathogenicity, said the world protection organization for animal health (OIE). Officials are in a state of full readiness to new infections.

The authorities have also declared a quarantine and made arrangements for the oversight of farms in the County of Jasper, which was struck by the H5N1 strain of the virus to trace the appearance of new outbreaks, according to the Ministry of agriculture of Missouri. All commercial flocks within a 10 km radius from the affected farm were tested negative for the presence of the disease, said the Ministry.

The outbreak, which was discovered late last month, considered low pathogenic. This means that the disease is not as contagious or deadly as other types of illness. Such strains are still matters of concern of the agricultural sector and employees of the Ministry of health because they can mutate into more dangerous highly pathogenic forms of the virus.

Japan banned the import of poultry from the area around the infected farm and Kazakhstan banned the import of County Jasper products, if they are not treated with the necessary high temperature, according to the Ministry of agriculture of the United States.

In January, a flock of turkeys in Indiana, under assumptions were infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza, when a less dangerous strain has mutated. More than 400,000 birds around the infected farm was eventually destroyed to contain the outbreak.

Last year nearly 50 million chickens and turkeys died in the United States, because the birds were infected during rapidly spreading outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza or sent to sanitary slaughter to contain the disease.

Birds from the infected flock in Missouri will not be included in the food system, according to the USDA.

In some outbreaks of low pathogenic avian influenza infected poultry may be shipped for slaughter for meat, if the birds have time to recover from illness and to give a negative result for infection. However, the herd in Missouri was sent to slaughter one week after infection, and this was not enough for this process, the USDA said.

The Ministry said that fighting an infection in Missouri, as with any other case low pathogenic avian influenza.

Wild birds believed to spread the virus on farms through feces and feathers that fall from the sky. The strain in Missouri takes its origin from North American wild birds, officials said.

Source: Thomson Reuters