A killer bird flu outbreak has hit multiple farms in Arizona – and the variant has wiped out millions of birds from one of the United States’s largest egg producers.
Chickens at Hickman Farms in Buckeye, Arizona began showing symptoms at the end of May.
The initial loss was estimated at 1.1 million birds, but just two weeks after the flock got sick, 6 million have died. That accounted for about 95 percent of Hickman Farms’ bird population.
CEO Glenn Hickman held a press conference on May 30 to address the situation. To him, the loss was entirely preventable.
‘If our pullets had been vaccinated when we started lobbying the federal government in January, our pullets would have been saved by now,’ he said.
Hickman and Hickman Family farms have been advocating for access to avian flu vaccines since January. According to the company’s website, which addresses the situation, the U.S. government makes a vaccine, but only uses it as an export.
‘European countries have now been vaccinating their flocks for a couple of years and are gaining the upper hand on controlling this disease. That vaccine is actually made here in the U.S., but we export to other countries while our flocks go unprotected.’
The site encourages customers to contact their representatives in a continued push for access to vaccination.
Just like in humans, for chickens the jabs are worse than the disease.