Search Site   
Current News Stories
Solar eclipse, new moon coming April 8
Mystery illness affecting dairy cattle in Texas Panhandle
Teach others to live sustainably
Gun safety begins early
Hard-cooked eggs recipes great for Easter, anytime
Michigan carrot producers to vote on program continuation
Suggestions to celebrate 50th wedding anniversary
USDA finalizes new ‘Product of the USA’ labeling rule 
U.S. weather outlooks currently favoring early planting season
Weaver Popcorn Hybrids expanding and moving to new facility
Role of women in agriculture changing Hoosier dairy farmer says
   
News Articles
Search News  
   
BOAH disposal trial is prep for future HPAI outbreaks
 
By EMMA HOPKINS
Indiana Correspondent
 
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) were major health concerns for poultry in Indiana early last year. The threat was neutralized by the Indiana State Board of Animal Health (BOAH) efforts, but the agency continues to work on streamlining the decontamination process in case of future infections.
 
Indiana is maintaining its avian flu-free status. But as with all major and deadly livestock disease outbreaks, the cost was high: More than 400,000 birds on 10 farms had to be euthanized to prevent the spread of disease.

One challenge in the cleanup of such outbreaks is disposing of carcasses. Dr. Maria Cooper, deputy director of biodefense, food protection and high consequence disease preparedness at BOAH, recently helped organize a joint federal, state and industry workshop to help streamline the process of poultry carcass disposal in case of future outbreak.

“One of the biggest challenges nationwide and globally in responding to an animal health emergency is carcass disposal," she said. “There’s high mortality either because of the pathogen itself or because depopulation or euthanasia takes place to contain or eradicate the disease.”

In May, Cooper and other industry members did a carcass disposal runthrough testing a few different trucks, truck liners and the ease of using a landfill to dispose of carcasses. The participating landfill was Rumpke Medora Landfill in Dubois County and the exercise used 25,000 spent laying hen carcasses (birds too old to be productive) as the models for “infected” poultry carcasses.

“In Iowa in 2015, from the day that they first diagnosed high-path to the time that the truck first made it to the landfills – 42 days – there were hot temperatures, and you can imagine poultry carcasses, millions of them, sitting in hot temperatures, not getting disposed of, causes a messy situation,” Cooper said.

“Being able to exercise taking uninfected birds to a landfill and doing it the way that it has to be done in an emergency, or as if they were infected, was a good exercise.”

Over the span of a couple days, Cooper and her group did just that. The first consideration was of truck routes in and out of biosecurity zones when carrying carcasses.

“We had to decide, ‘Will a semi-truck be able to make this turn?’” she explained. “It takes some time to put these together, so for some companies, we are helping them designate these zones ahead of time so we know what works for each of their sites.”

The USDA suggests certain guidelines for disposing of carcasses in case of emergency, but BOAH wanted to see if the process could be done more efficiently in Indiana.

“At USDA, when disposing of carcasses at a landfill, the guidelines are always going to be very specific – ‘We’re going to use this truck and this biobag,’” she said. 
 
“So, we decided to try different types of trucks and different types of liners to get them down the road in a biosecure fashion, and for each phase of the exercise we were looking at how long it took using a certain amount of laborers, how much money it cost, whether it was biosecure.”

Experimenting for efficiency

First on the list of methods was using a tri-axle truck with a different kind of bag than the usual biobag, costing $37.50 as compared to a biobag, which is $350 and upwards.

“These liners were about 10 times cheaper to use, which is obviously what we were interested in,” Cooper said. “It feels very similar to a black garbage bag and is pretty easy to line; with six people it takes about 10 to 15 minutes. The truck could hold about 6,000 spent hens at a time.”

The second method was using a more traditional roll-off bag costing $330. Those bags could zipper shut, but she found that feature unnecessary. “We wanted to try what is considered the ‘gold standard’ for disposal bags,” she explained.

“These bags do zipper shut. But what we found using the other bags was that you don’t really need a zipper if you fold over the liner, and if you’re driving down the road, nothing is coming out, and by the time you get it to the landfill and dump it out, it doesn’t matter if the bag bursts.”

When they tried an even less expensive line costing $27, the group found it worked just as well. Further, they found using a coal truck allowed them to haul 12,000 carcasses at once.

“We also had chase cars go behind the trucks to look for leakage, feathers, those types of things,” Cooper said. “When we arrived at the landfill, all bags we tried had tears in them, but we had no issues on the road with leakage spilling.”

Bags tore especially when they sat overnight and the carcasses bloated. To remedy this, Cooper said putting absorptive material under the bag could help.

Because feed and bedding of infected  birds would also need to be disposed of, Cooper suggests producers use those materials to absorb leaks instead of buying something else to soak up leakage.

The company BOAH worked with for the exercise is planning to test these materials in future trials.

“My main lesson learned was that the biobag had the exact same outcome as a $27 bag, so perhaps it’s not necessary to spend that much money and use a specific container if the results are going to be the same,” Cooper said. 
7/27/2017