During a recent Senate Ag committee hearing where bird flu took center stage, USDA Under Secretary of Agriculture Jenny Moffitt told lawmakers the Department is acting very quickly to address any and all outbreaks, regardless of where they occur across the country. And she noted that it’s been a huge effort.
“We’ve had over 800 employees deployed over the course of the past here this is in partnership with states as well as the industry and us and implementing bio security measures and making sure that every time we have an uptick in in high path avian influenza we stamp it out as quickly as possible to make sure that the disease is not spreading beyond the borders of that that one operation.”
But experts say for the most part the virus is being spread across the country by infected wild birds. Moffit said USDA has been working globally to keep as many foreign markets as possible open to U.S. poultry products and she said they have managed to, “keep open many markets that we did not have open in the 2015 outbreak.”
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