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Georgia agricultural officials have confirmed a fifth bird flu outbreak this year in a commercial poultry operation, this time in Gordon County in North Georgia, resulting in the killing of about 140,000 broiler chickens over the weekend.
This is the third confirmed detection of bird flu in a commercial poultry operation this year. The two prior commercial outbreaks were in neighboring flocks owned by the same family in Elbert County. Bird flu was also found in backyard poultry flocks in Clayton County in January and in Henry County in September.
Since the surveillance and cleanup operations for the Gordon County case have been handled by state agencies, the federal government shutdown has had a limited impact, said Georgia Department of Agriculture spokesperson Matthew Agvent.
The chicken farm operators suspected bird flu last Wednesday, and samples were sent to the Georgia Poultry Laboratory Network for testing the next day. Bird flu was confirmed by the lab on Thursday, with additional confirmation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s laboratory on Friday, according to a press release from GDA.
The disease can be transferred from infected birds to workers involved in the cleanup, Andrew Pekosz, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Healthbeat earlier this year.
Georgia Department of Public Health officials will monitor involved workers for symptoms for 10 days after the cleanup and containment operations end to ensure they are not affected, Agvent said.
While the impacts of the federal shutdown are limited, it may affect the farmer’s ability to get an indemnity payment from the federal government, as well as the GDA’s ability to get reimbursed for cleanup expenses, Agvent said.
Georgia’s $7.75 billion commercial poultry industry is one of the largest in the nation, so bird flu “poses a serious threat,” Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper said.
The 51 commercial poultry operations within 6.2 miles of the infected flock have been under quarantine since Friday. Bird flu testing will be conducted for at least two weeks.
About 345,530 birds in Georgia have been affected since the current outbreak began in the United States in February 2022, according to the USDA.
Bird flu cases are higher in the spring and fall because that’s when wild birds migrate, the USDA says.
In the past week, bird flu has been detected in wild birds in Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New York, South Dakota, and Wisconsin, according to the USDA.
Visitors to a petting zoo in Alberta, Canada were recently advised to get tested for bird flu after birds at the farm were found to be infected.
Some of the main symptoms of bird flu in humans include fever, cough, sore throat, and pink eye (conjunctivitis). If a health care provider identifies a human case, it must be reported to the state within seven days.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed 70 human cases in the United States since April 2024; none in Georgia. There has been one death: an elderly person in Louisiana who had underlying health conditions and was likely exposed via a backyard flock.
Researchers could not trace a source of exposure in a San Francisco child who came down with bird flu earlier this year and found no evidence of human-to-human transmission, according to a September report from the CDC.
Rebecca Grapevine is a reporter covering public health in Atlanta for Healthbeat. Contact Rebecca at rgrapevine@healthbeat.org.
