Dive Brief:
- About a week after Iowa reported its first H5N2 avian flu outbreak in a commercial turkey flock, the state has now reported an outbreak in a chicken farm as well.
- The farm's flock had about 5.3 million chickens, all of which have to be killed to prevent spreading the virus. This single flock was close to double the number of birds affected by previous outbreaks, all of which now total almost 8 million turkeys and chickens.
- The Iowa outbreak is of particular concern to the egg industry, as Iowa is the country's top egg-producing state, with about one in five eggs consumed in the U.S. coming from an Iowa hen.
Dive Insight:
According to USDA data, though these outbreaks are growing in number, H5N2 has still hindered only a fraction of the total U.S. poultry industry, which produced about 9.2 billion broiler chickens and 235 million turkeys last year, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Meat-producing companies have been affected in a variety of ways since the outbreaks began, such as Tyson's tumbling stock price in March. One company feeling the brunt of the avian flu's effects is Hormel Foods Corp. Its Jennie-O brand has been suffering as several of its turkey supply farms in Minnesota and Wisconsin have been affected by the H5N2 strain. Hormel has now announced that it would maintain its fiscal 2015 guidance but says that the results will likely trend toward the lower end of those estimates.