A Long Island farm will reportedly kill more than 100,000 ducks after an outbreak of bird flu at an eastern New York facility.
But the staff Crescent Duck Farm In Aquebogue, New York, noticed that many birds were sick. Newsday and local stations WABC-TV. They later tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), which is infecting people, pets and poultry across the United States.
Doug Corwin, president of Crescent Duck Farm, said the euthanasia was particularly devastating because Long Island was known for its extensive duck farming industry. The business is the largest commercial duck farm in Suffolk County and one of the last on Long Island, WABC reported.
The family-owned farm has been in operation since 1908, WABC reported.
“You monitor your flock constantly — three times a day. One day things seemed unusual. I saw a few lazy birds that didn’t seem right,” Corwin told Newsday. “That’s my legacy. I think we’re kind of famous, considering we’re what Long Island was known for. And I don’t want it to end like that.”
But Suffolk County Health Commissioner Gregson Piggott told the station that the entire herd has to be killed for public safety.
“Unfortunately, when you have a situation where you have one herd infected, the remedy is to put the whole herd down,” he said.
Bird flu was found at a commercial poultry plant in Georgia.
Bird flu reached a northeast Georgia poultry plant last week, marking the fifth positive case of HPAI in the state and the first at a commercial poultry operation, state officials confirmed.
The case was located at a facility in Elbert County, the Georgia Department of Agriculture confirmed Friday with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Authorities on Friday issued a quarantine of all commercial poultry operations within a 6.2-mile radius, which will be subject to surveillance testing for at least two weeks. All intra-state poultry exhibitions, shows, exchanges, meetings and sales have been suspended until further notice, the department said.
“This is a serious threat to Georgia’s #1 industry and the livelihoods of thousands of Georgians who make their living in our state’s poultry industry,” Tyler Harper, state agriculture commissioner, said in a statement. “We are working around the clock to minimize further spread of the disease and ensure that normal poultry operations in Georgia can resume as soon as possible.”
Bird Flu: What to Know Now
Bird flu has been spreading around the world since 1997, but until recent years it was mostly confined to wild birds. Since emerging in Europe in 2020, the current bird flu strain, H5N1, has been described as the continent’s largest avian flu outbreak to date and has spread to Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
A strain of bird flu appeared in the US in late 2021. A total of 61 human cases of H5 bird flu have been reported in the United States since April 2024. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Earlier this month, the first bird flu death in the United States was reported by the Louisiana Department of Public Health on January 6. The patient was over 65 years of age and had reported underlying medical conditions.
Back in December, a line of cat food from Northwest Naturals was recalled due to bird flu concerns after health officials linked the death of a cat to a batch of feed contaminated with bird flu. The USDA also initiated nationwide milk testing to combat bird flu outbreaks in dairy herds.
The outbreak of bird flu in chicken flocks in the United States is also driving up egg prices. By January 6, the virus had infected more than that. 138 million poultry In all 50 US states by January 2022, according to the CDC.
