Jun. 6 at 3:19 PM
A killer bird flu outbreak has hit multiple farms in Arizona & the variant has wiped out millions of birds from one of the US's largest egg producers.
The initial loss was estimated at 1.1M birds, but just 2 weeks after the flock got sick, 6M have died. That accted for about 95% of Hickman Farms' bird population.
CEO: 'If our pullets had been vaccinated when we started lobbying the federal govt in January, our pullets would have been saved by now,'
Hickman & Hickman Family farms have been advocating for access to avian flu vaccines since January. According to the company's website, which addresses the situation, the US govt makes a vaccine, but only uses it as an export.
On June 2, the Arizona Dept of Ag confirmed that another farm in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area & was placed under quarantine.
Process of de-populating, cleaning & re-populating will take ~2 years.
Normally, 300M laying hens nationwide req'd to keep up w/ egg demand.
$CALM $VITL