After soaring sharply in September, no commercial poultry operations in Alberta were hit by H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza during the first three weeks of October.
As of Oct. 24, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency website had only four incidents for the month.
Three were for “non-poultry” and the lone poultry flock was a non-commercial one that was reported on Oct. 13. That’s a dramatic change from September, when 15 flocks (all but two commercial) were infected.
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However, it’s a different story elsewhere.
For example, Quebec (which had no cases in August and September) and Ontario saw infections in several commercial flocks in mid-October. As of Oct. 19, there had been 200 cases in Canada, with 3.1 million birds affected. Alberta had a quarter of those cases, with 1.3 million birds affected.
