The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) officially reported the presence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in a flock of commercial turkeys in Cherokee County, Iowa.
The case, reported by APHIS on June 3, impacted 1,00,000 birds. It was initially reported by the Iowa Department of Agriculture & Land Stewardship (IDALS) on June 2, but the size of the flock was not shared.
Prior to this HPAI detection, Iowa had only had one flock affected by the virus in 2024, according to the APHIS. That was a flock of 4,287,400 commercial laying hens in Sioux County, with that case being confirmed on May 28. In 2023, Iowa lost 2,894,200 birds to HPAI, down from 15.9 million in 2022. Two of the flocks lost in 2023 involved more than 1 million birds, with the largest involving 1.6 million.
This is the first time since 2022 a flock in Cherokee County has been struck by HPAI. That year, three flocks were affected, all of which involved commercial meat turkeys. Two of those cases were confirmed in December 2022. One of those flocks had 50,000 turkeys and the other had 105,000 turkeys. The other case was confirmed in March 2022, and 88,000 birds were affected.
To learn more about HPAI cases in commercial poultry flocks in the United States, Mexico and Canada, see an interactive map on WATTPoultry.com.
View our continuing coverage of the global avian influenza situation.
