The 2025 delaware department of agriculture hpai emergency cooperative agreement funding will contribute to payment for unexpected costs arising from the disease response to the highly pathogenic…

This $348,021.03 Cooperative Agreement award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care program (CFDA 10.025) will support the Delaware Department of Agriculture's response to the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak that began in January 2025. The award will cover costs for state responder overtime, personnel travel and lodging, personal protective equipment (PPE), disposal supplies, and contractors to assist with disease surveillance, biosecurity monitoring, euthanasia, cleaning and disinfection, stakeholder outreach, and data management. The University of Delaware's National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN) lab also contributed substantially to the response efforts through this funding. The key deliverables include facilitating a timely return to normal poultry production and trade, maintaining robust biosecurity, enabling infected premises to resume operations, conducting stakeholder outreach, and ongoing HPAI surveillance and investigation.

Activities

Activities performed by delaware responders include issuance and notification of state's quarantines; disease surveillance in control areas and surveillance zones; monitoring of biosecurity on infected premises; monitoring of euthanasia of infected poultry and disposal of carcasses; monitoring of cleaning and disinfection (c & d) of infected premises; approval of permits for movement of feed, supplies and products into or out of control areas; stakeholder outreach; response to sick bird calls; environmental sampling; real time reporting of disease response status; data entry and incident document management. Deliverables and expected outcomes: cooperator activities will facilitate a timely return to normal poultry production/ trade within the state and with other state trading partners to the extent possible under the circumstances; encourages and monitors robust biosecurity of production facilities to minimize further transmission of hpai; facilitates return to production by infected premises at the earliest possible opportunity; maintains outreach and education to stakeholders and consumers; and maintains hpai surveillance and investigation of suspicious sick bird calls to allow earliest detection should hpai RE-emerge or be RE-introduced. Intended beneficiary(IES): rapid and effective response to hpai outbreak in delaware minimizes further transmission of disease to other premises and minimizes the impact, to the extent possible, to agriculture trade within delaware and with other states. This benefits the delaware poultry industry, as well as consumers, who continue to have access to poultry and poultry products produced within the state. Subrecipient activities if known or specified at the time of the award: the university of delaware nahln laboratory contributes to hpai surveillance testing within the state. This serves to exercise the response capabilities and messaging of test results to emrs by both laboratories. Equally important, the nahln laboratory testing allows for timely results on surveillance testing in control areas/ surveillance zones and testing in conjunction with sick bird calls/ foreign animal disease investigations.