by Ben Nuelle Money Matters 8-16-16
Poultry exhibits return to Iowa State Fair.
About a year ago, in June, was the last known case of avian flu in Iowa. Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey is happy to see poultry producers back at the fair.
?We?re very glad to be able to have almost all of the poultry producers back to full operation. We have a few of the egg laying operations that are still putting in birds but all of the turkey operations are back. All the egg laying operations have some birds back in. The rest will be filled by the end of this year. We?re excited we didn?t have avian influenza this year. We had a large number of poultry at most of our county fairs and here at the state fair.?
He says we?re still number one in egg production.
?We?re back to 55 million layers. The number two state is about 30 million layers so we?re back to number one in egg production.?
Northey says there is always a fear of avian flu coming back.
?There is always vigilance to make sure we would do everything we can to prevent it from coming into our livestock operations. We call that biosecurity. Most of our producers have invested a large amount of money to make sure it doesn?t come in on trucks.?
He adds it is something every livestock and poultry producer thinks about.
