Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., recognized as the country’s largest producer of fresh eggs, announced on Tuesday that it has temporarily suspended operations at one of its major facilities located in Parmer County, Texas.
This from survivethenews.com.
This drastic measure comes in the wake of a detected outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).
The outbreak has led to the culling of approximately 1.6 million laying hens and 337,000 pullets.
This action represents about 3.6% of Cal-Maine Foods’ total flock as of early March 2024, marking a significant loss for the company and the egg industry as a whole.
Cal-Maine released the following statement:
Cal-Maine today reported that one of the Company’s facilities located in Parmer County, Texas, tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza (“HPAI”), resulting in depopulation of approximately 1.6 million laying hens and 337,000 pullets, or approximately 3.6% of the Company’s total flock as of March 2, 2024.
Production at the facility has temporarily ceased as the Company follows the protocols prescribed by the USDA. Cal-Maine Foods is working to secure production from other facilities to minimize disruption to its customers.
The Company remains dedicated to robust biosecurity programs across its locations; however, no farm is immune from HPAI. HPAI is still present in the wild bird population and the extent of possible future outbreaks, with heightened risk during the migration seasons, cannot be predicted. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the human health risk to the U.S. public from HPAI viruses is considered to be low. Also, according to the USDA, HPAI cannot be transmitted through safely handled and properly cooked eggs. There is no known risk related to HPAI associated with eggs that are currently in the market and no eggs have been recalled.
The Company continues to work closely with federal, state and local government officials and focused industry groups to mitigate the risk of future outbreaks and effectively manage the response.
The APHIS division of the USDA and individual states track and publicly report individual incidents of HPAI by location. The Company will provide updated information in its next quarterly report to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and does not expect to provide interim updates unless material.
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The largest egg producer in the U.S. has shut down production and culled more than 1.5 million chickens after a major bird flu outbreak at a Texas plant.
This comes as the highly contagious virus has been found in at least six states among dairy cows.
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) April 4, 2024
The Gateway Pundit previously reported:
[E]xperts have cautioned that a bird flu pandemic may be looming on the horizon, one that could be catastrophic on a scale ‘100 times worse than Covid-19.’
During a recent briefing, scientists highlighted the increasing risk of the H5N1 bird flu strain turning into a pandemic.
According to the World Health Organization:
[T]he H5N1 fatality rate stands at an alarming 52 percent, a stark contrast to the less than 0.1 percent mortality rate of Covid-19.
The concern is that if H5N1 becomes easily transmitted among humans while maintaining its high fatality rate, the consequences could be dire.
According to Daily Mail:
The meeting, attended by leading bird flu researchers, medical professionals, and government officials, was convened in response to the human bird flu case and organized by John Fulton, a vaccine consultant and pharmaceutical industry expert.
Fulton stated:
This appears to be 100 times worse than Covid, or it could be if it mutates and maintains its high case fatality rate.
Once it’s mutated to infect humans, we can only hope that the [fatality rate] drops.
Dr. Suresh Kuchipudi, a notable figure in bird flu research, warned of the virus’s potential for a pandemic, highlighting its global distribution and ability to infect a variety of mammals, including humans.
However, according to an article in The New York Times by titled Is Bird Flu Coming to People Next? Are We Ready?, unlike the coronavirus, the H5N1 virus has been studied for years, and vaccines and treatments are available should they ever become necessary.
The concern in large part is that bird flu outbreaks among dairy cows in multiple states, and at least one infection in a farmworker in Texas, have incited fears that the virus may be the next infectious threat to people.
The influenza virus, called H5N1, is highly pathogenic, meaning it has the ability to cause severe disease and death.
But federal officials have said:
[W]hile its spread among cows was unexpected, people can catch the virus only from close contact with infected animals, not from one another.
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said:
It’s really about folks who are in environments where they may be interacting with cattle that are infected with this virus.
Further:
The risk for most everyone else is very low.
Right now, our risk assessment hasn’t changed, but if it does change, we’re going be pretty quick and pretty transparent about that.
Avian influenza is often fatal in birds, but none of the infected cows have died so far. The only symptom in the patient in Texas was conjunctivitis, or pink eye, which was also reported in people infected during other bird flu outbreaks.
The C.D.C. and other agencies in the United States and elsewhere have tracked H5N1 for years to monitor its evolution. Federal agencies have stockpiled vaccines and drugs to be used in a possible bird flu outbreak.
Rick Bright, the chief executive of Bright Global Health, a consulting company that focuses on improving responses to public health emergencies, said:
We are more ready for an influenza pandemic than probably any other outbreak that could occur, any other pathogen.
Dr. Bright led influenza preparedness at the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, the federal agency that supports research on vaccines and drugs for emergencies, for several years before he served as the agency’s director from 2016 to 2020.
Here’s what we need to know about the H5N1 virus:
– Among birds and animals, the H5N1 bird flu is already a pandemic, or a panzootic, with infections observed on every continent except Australia. To date, the virus has not evolved into a form that can spread easily from one person to another, and it may never do so,
– As its name indicates, H5N1 has primarily been a problem in birds. But it has now spread to a wide range of species, from sea birds and small scavengers like foxes to large mammals, like bears and cows,
– There have been sporadic infections in people since 1997, when a cluster of cases appeared in Hong Kong. But most patients worldwide have been in very close contact with infected animals, and generally they did not pass the virus to other people, and
– To become adept at transmission between people, H5N1 would need to pick up several additional mutations and shift its shape. The strain that was isolated from the infected farmworker in Texas carries one of those mutations, but that change has appeared before—in people, foxes, and seals, among others—without further consequences.
Dr. Vincent Munster, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has studied the mutations needed for H5N1 to adapt to people, said:
The infections in people so far fortunately are all still single-time cross-species transmission.
Further:
History suggests that even if the virus changes enough to begin widespread transmission between people, it may have to give something up in return.
For example, when other flu viruses have adapted to humans, they have lost much of their virulence, causing only mild symptoms.
For information concerning vaccines and treatments, go to the original The New York Times article.
