Tyson, the biggest chicken meat producer in the United States, said in a statement it was working with Tennessee and federal officials to contain the virus by euthanizing the birds on the contract farm.
This will not be good for Tyson Foods.
Tyson says there is no evidence that a properly cooked chicken could transmit any form of avian influenza.
"In the unlikely event that any chickens affected by avian influenza were ever processed, there's no evidence to suggest that any form of avian influenza can be transmitted to humans from properly cooked poultry."
I would think most people touch the chicken when removing it from the package before they cook it. Should they wear gloves? Given these stats, I would think so.
Although unlikely, if contracted HPAI carries a mortality rate of 90% to 100%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Reuters reports South Korea has already instituted a ban on importing U.S. poultry and eggs. Japan and Taiwan are blocking poultry from Tennessee, and Hong Kong will ban poultry imports from Lincoln County. (no link due to auto-play video)
How do you euthanize a chicken? In this case, it was done by suffocating them with foam.
The farms in these parts of the country (TN, AL) raise "broiler chickens" and the area is known as "the broiler belt."
The infected farm housed roosters and hens that produced fertilized eggs, which hatch into the "broiler" chickens raised for meat. Often, such facilities have even higher security measures than farms raising birds for slaughter because the breeding animals are more valuable.
"The thing that's worrisome is that it's in the broiler belt," said John Glisson, vice president of research for the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association....Just in Alabama, across the border from the infected farm, producers raised more than 1 billion broiler chickens in 2015.
The USDA says the strain of virus that struck the farm had a "North American wild bird lineage."
The spokesman for a chicken-industry group praised the farm owner for "practicing pretty good biosecurity" because only 1 of the 8 chicken houses on his farm was affected.
The owner of the farm said he will bury the remains of the 73,500 killed chickens on the property.
