A second turkey operation in southwestern Ontario has been confirmed and quarantined with highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza — but of a strain separate from the one seen in an outbreak in the same region a day earlier.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in a statement Monday its National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg has confirmed high-path H5N1 in a second poultry flock in southern Ontario.
In a report filed separately Tuesday with the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), CFIA officials said they had confirmed cases reported to the agency Friday at a farm in the Wellington County area north of Kitchener, with about 600 deaths in a flock of commercial 13-week-old breeding turkeys.
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The second outbreak, which CFIA said was reported to it on Saturday, was in a flock of commercial four-week-old broiler turkeys in Oxford County, east of London, with 375 deaths.
CFIA later said the two outbreaks were in the townships of Guelph/Eramosa and Zorra, respectively.
CFIA said in its report that the first outbreak showed a “unique constellation of gene segments,” some of which come from “wild bird origin North American lineage” influenza A viruses, and the others from the strain of H5N1 now seen circulating in wild and domestic birds in the Atlantic provinces, the U.S. and Europe.
The second outbreak, however, was H5N1 consistent with the cases in the Atlantic provinces and elsewhere. The different genomic sequencing “suggests distinct introductions” of influenza A in the area, the agency said.
CFIA, in a separate report to the OIE dated last Thursday, said it had confirmed H5N1 in a red-tailed hawk in southern Ontario which also showed a “unique constellation” of avian flu genetics that included wild-bird origin segments along with those from the prevailing strain in Atlantic Canada.
As for the two affected premises, CFIA said in its report to the OIE it “has immediately quarantined the infected farms and is implementing strict movement controls and a stamping-out policy.”
The two properties will also have a three-kilometre “protection zone” and a 10-km “surveillance zone”, with surveillance ongoing in the affected area, the agency said.
Separately, the Ontario poultry and egg industries’ Feather Board Command Centre, which monitors disease outbreaks in birds at the provincial, national and global levels, now says it’s also following a “high mortality situation” in a small poultry flock in nearby Bruce County, also in southwestern Ontario. Lab tests are “pending” in that case, the FBCC said.
Other high-path H5N1 cases in Canada since last fall have included wild birds in all four Atlantic provinces and a bald eagle in the Vancouver area, plus domestic birds at two “non-poultry” farms in Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula and two non-commercial backyard flocks in Nova Scotia.
Since none of those cases involved commercial poultry, Canada had been considered free of high-path avian flu since 2015 just up until last month, when H5N1 was confirmed at a commercial poultry farm and at a mixed farm with poultry, both in Nova Scotia.
After the on-farm cases in Nova Scotia were confirmed, several countries including the U.S., European Union, Japan and Korea imposed new import restrictions on Canadian poultry, eggs and/or other products, or on those from the affected province.
In the U.S. since February, cases of H5N1 have been confirmed in commercial poultry and/or backyard flocks in 18 states, including Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Virgina, Wisconsin and, as of Saturday, Minnesota. — Glacier FarmMedia Network
