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Governor Walz encouraged by Minnesota response to high-path avian flu

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is encouraged by the response to highly pathogenic avian influenza.

“It looks like we’re maybe getting the upper hand on that (and) the warm weather is going to help us.”

The avian flu outbreak in 2015 devastated Minnesota’s turkey and egg production sectors, as more than 9 million birds were lost across 23 counties resulting in financial losses of $647 million.

Walz tells Brownfield while it’s too soon to claim victory, lessons learned seven years ago are paying off now.

“It’s still pretty tragic, you know we still have millions of birds impacted. But we’ve already got folks repopulating on this (and) I do think we learned our lessons from that, learned it well.”

Since its first detection in the state in late March, avian flu has resulted in the loss of nearly 3 million birds in Minnesota.  The most recent cases were reported May 10^th in Chisago and Grant Counties.