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California declares state of emergency over bird flu
California Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency in response to a rapidly spreading bird flu outbreak among the state’s dairy cattle.
unbranded – Newsworthy
Health officials confirmed the first case of a person with bird flu in Los Angeles County on Monday.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in a news release that the person with bird flu was exposed to infected livestock at a worksite. The person sickened had mild symptoms and was treated with antivirals, said county health officials.
There have been 37 confirmed cases of bird flu in people in California, according to numbers last updated Monday by the California Department of Public Health. That’s up three confirmed cases in less than a week.
The risk of bird flu to the public remains low, although people in specific jobs, including farmworkers, are at a higher risk of getting it.
This news follows Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent state of emergency declaration to combat bird flu in California, a disease ravaging the state’s dairy farms and poultry for months. That includes 650 dairies infected since the bird flu was first detected in California dairies earlier this year, the California Department of Food and Agriculture said on Dec. 19.
Bird flu continues to be confirmed in poultry flocks in the state, including commercial flocks in Merced, Monterey, and Tulare Counties, the state food and agriculture department announced throughout December. Since 2022, more than 125 million birds have been affected in the U.S. by this bird flu outbreak, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Birds affected means the number of birds on confirmed infected premises, the USDA explained.
The bird flu has also impacted Americans in a different capacity. It’s impacting egg prices. The average cost of a dozen Grade A large eggs was $3.65 in November, up 28 cents from October and more than a dollar at the beginning of the year, USA TODAY reported.
How is the bird flu impacting egg prices?
The USDA’s egg markets overview report on Friday said that this year, 36.8 million table egg-laying birds in a dozen states, including California, were lost due to bird flu outbreaks and facility fires. Specifically, California has lost more than 7 million table egg-laying birds due to the bird flu and fire since January. The only state with more losses was Iowa.
More than a third of the total losses across California and the other 11 states occurred since November, and that has resulted in sharp price increases as we head “into the peak annual shell egg demand period.”
“Demand for shell eggs strengthened headed in the holiday week as consumers finalize their holiday preparations,” according to the USDA’s report, and concerns over “tight” supplies due to bird flu outbreaks in egg-laying flocks are “driving wholesale prices to near-record levels.”
Eggs are especially in demand during the winter holiday season, said Marc Dresner, director of integrated communications for the American Egg Board, to the Visalia Times-Delta. Therefore, they are more expensive around the holidays because more are being sold, he said.
“Eggs are sold as a commodity, like wheat and corn and other agricultural products, and they’re sold on markets, and those market prices are largely driven by supply and demand,” he said.
Yet, with the national supply of eggs impacted by bird flu, there is a “tighter supply” than preferred at a “peak demand season,” and thus reflected in wholesale prices, Dresner said.
Visalia Times-Delta reporter Steve Pastis contributed to this article.
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