WILLMAR, Minn. — Fall is a busy time of year in the poultry industry, and not just for raising turkeys. A lot goes on in the background to ensure that a Thanksgiving menu can include turkey at a reasonable cost.
Foremost in that behind-the-scenes work is the challenge of combatting highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), otherwise known as “bird flu.” Minnesota is working to meet the challenge thanks, in part, to past expansion and pending improvements at the Minnesota Poultry Testing Lab (MPTL) in Willmar.
“It’s a busy time of year, moving a lot of birds,” one staff member said.
Improvements are likely following the passage of a federal budget bill that includes $1 million for new and better equipment for the MPTL. The money will help enhance the lab’s testing capacity, replace aging equipment and upgrade software, said Hemant K. Naikare, director of the University of Minnesota Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (MVDL), which runs the labs in Willmar and St. Paul.
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Currently, there are 27 active HPAI cases in Minnesota, down from 31 in 2024, 40 in 2023 and 110 in 2023. Cases earlier this year that spread around the state were due in part to weather and wind, MPTL manager Stacy Pollock said. “The industry has refined its biosecurity and is trying different things to stop the spread,” she said.
A major outbreak occurred in 2015 when HPAI rampaged through turkey barns, many located in central Minnesota. Stopping the spread required the “depopulation” of infected barns, a grim task that brought in hundreds of animal health workers from around the nation.
During the recent government shutdown, federal workers on duty for HPAI were classified as essential. “There is no sign of delay from the feds. Their partnership with Minnesota is second to none, and I have an amazing team of technicians,” Naikare said.
Although Minnesota has had the most HPAI cases, “we are on top of the situation now. We learned so much in 2015,” Pollock said.
The LIMS – Laboratory Information Management System – software upgrade will improve data sharing among clients, state and federal partners. Veterinarians can log in to look at records similar to how MyChart connects physicians and patients, Naikare said. About 800 trained technicians around the state collect test samples in the barns. Producers can collect their own samples once they take official training from the BAH.
Strong partnership
As an official laboratory for the Minnesota Board of Animal Health, the Willmar lab tests for all foreign animal diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease, African swine fever and others.
Pollock began working at MPTL in 1993 with just two staff members. Following the HPAI outbreak in 2015, the state spent $10 million to build and equip a new lab in Willmar. It opened in 2016, and today the staff numbers 14.
In the 1960s, the Willmar testing lab began working with the BAH for the National Poultry Improvement Program (NPIP). In the early 2000s, Willmar MPTL began conducting diagnostic work for the BAH and the NPIP.
“We’ve grown quite a bit,” Pollock said. “We have poultry-specific staff in St. Paul, and they can come here for pathology work.”
In September, the MPTL participated in a training exercise in St. Paul for HPAI and with the MVDL for foreign animal diseases such as foot-and-mouth.
During the 2015 epidemic, the Willmar lab was not set up for polymerase chain reaction testing – a crucial diagnostics tool for bird flu, Pollock said. “It was necessary to send samples to the St. Paul lab. With the expansion of the new lab in 2016, we grew with the poultry industry and began the PCR testing in Willmar.”
Still a waiting game
Minnesota leads the nation in annual turkey production and raised 32 million turkeys in 2024, according to the state Department of Agriculture.
“In Minnesota, we are positioned geographically in an area where we have a lot of migration and a lot of movement of wild birds,” said Shauna Voss, a BAH veterinarian who specializes in poultry and works at the Willmar lab. “Turkeys are just more susceptible to these viruses than other birds.”
The United States has never been able to declare itself completely free of HPAI, Voss said.
“Since the start of the outbreak in Minnesota this year we’ve had to depopulate nearly 10 million turkeys,” she said. “It’s not a landmark that we are proud of but it just kind of emphasizes how big of an issue it is, how big of an impact it’s had on our industry.”
While the outbreak starting in 2022 is considered to be ongoing, it’s far less intense compared with the one in 2015, Voss said.
“There’s no one thing that prevents all of the infections,” Voss said. “What producers do is try to layer. They are layering biosecurity, measures and protocols around the barns to make sure they’re not tracking anything in, and then they’ll try to use things like deterrence such as lasers to deter wild birds.”
Epicenter of turkey production
Ashley Kohls, executive director of the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association, said the lab’s location in turkey growing country is invaluable. “Our interaction with them is daily, especially in the spring and fall when we tend to have higher peaks of high path AI, but also year-round.
“I would consider Kandiyohi County to be not just the epicenter of turkey production and processing, but it’s also the innovation hub of the turkey industry, with all of the companies that started there,” Kohls said.
Dating to the 1940s, today they include Jennie-O, founded in Willmar and sold to Hormel Foods in 1986. In addition to processing, it operates farms that raise about 75% of its turkeys and will be featured in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
Founded in 1945, Willmar Poultry Farms and its subsidiaries – Select Genetics, Wilpro, Farm Service Elevator and PALS – raise turkeys and offer services. Nova-Tech Engineering offers processing equipment, and Vaxxinova develops vaccines.
The MPTL is also certified for work with the National Poultry Improvement Program. The program began in the early 1930s as a partnership among industry, state and federal governments, initially to help reduce bacteria that harmed young poults, Pollock said. Today the federal-state-industry NPIP partnership addresses issues such as diseases affecting breeding stock, HPAI and LPAI, regulates testing programs and sets program standards.
Discussion is ongoing about vaccination against HPAI. “The USDA is in conversation with stakeholders and regulated industry, and our trading partners whether or not we can or should vaccinate,” Voss said.
“There’s a lot of research going on trying to support that, but right now there’s not a regulatory path forward,” Kohls said. “The biggest hangup for a vaccine is the red tape. HPAI is a global disease, and the World Trade Organization comes into play. When it comes to exports, the global approach historically has been to stamp out the disease, and so any country that deviates from the stamp-out approach and chooses to vaccinate, it really kind of restricts their export opportunities.”
Forrest Peterson is a Greater Minnesota-based freelance writer.
The post ‘Bird flu’ a manageable backdrop this Thanksgiving, thanks in part to a Kandiyohi County lab appeared first on MinnPost.
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