The minnesota turkey research and promotion council presenting this agreement represents the number one turkey producing state in the united states

The Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service awarded a Cooperative Agreement to the Minnesota Turkey Research and Promotion Council on February 2, 2026, obligating $1,174,938 under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care program (CFDA 10.025).

The recipient will conduct environmental and bird sampling at turkey farms infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) to identify risk factors that influence barn-to-barn virus transmission and develop methods to prevent it. Work includes daily environmental sampling of high-risk farm activities, air sampling during depopulation and compost-pile handling, daily tracheal swabs from clinically normal birds on infected premises, and laboratory testing to determine viral survival through the composting process. The project aims to establish biosecurity protocols that safely contain HPAI on positive premises, determine whether selective depopulation can prevent spread across barns, and reduce unnecessary bird depopulation and associated USDA indemnity costs.

Performance occurs in Minnesota from the award date through January 31, 2029. The recipient represents the leading turkey-producing state, which also maintains significant egg-layer and broiler operations.

Minnesota also represents other poultry present in the state including EGG-layers, and broilers. The purpose of this agreement is to understand the risk factors that influence the spread of hpai virus from barn-to-barn on an infected site. This will be achieved through environmental testing of different locations throughout the farm and sampling birds from clinically normal barns until the birds are depopulated. Through daily environmental and bird testing, a detailed picture of where hpai virus can be found in the days post detection and outline those risk factors and methods to combat them will be developed. Activities are listed below in this proposal, however a summary of activities that will be carried out includes taking air samples during depopulation and while creating and turning the compost pile, daily environmental samples of high-risk activities and daily tracheal swabs of clinically normal birds on site. This project will help understand what happens when applying high level biosecurity as a site tests positive with hpai to help prevent barn-to-barn transmission. This project will help identify how separating barns on a positive premises can safely contain hpai virus without creating a risk of spreading hpai virus to other barns on the infected premises or farms. The second objective of the project is to find how long virus is alive through the composting process obtained by sampling and rtpcr and virus isolation testing. If barn to barn transmission can be stopped with strategically depopulating the infected barn(s), IT will result in many beneficial outcomes such as providing information on how to reduce the total number of birds depopulated, maintain the poultry supply, reduce the amount of money USDA spends on indemnity and provide outreach material on specific biosecurity practices learned from this project. The second objective will result in the desired outcome of providing support in restructuring the composting process in the red book to help increase the speed at repopulating hpai premises. This information will be beneficial to all sectors of commercial poultry production as well as USDA in many facets.