The 2026 MN board of animal health hpai emergency cooperative agreement funding will contribute to payment for unexpected costs arising from the disease response to the highly pathogenic avian…

The Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service awarded the Minnesota Board of Animal Health a Cooperative Agreement for $511,400 on October 23, 2025, under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care program (CFDA 10.025) to reimburse unanticipated costs from the state's highly pathogenic avian influenza emergency response that began in September 2025.

Funded activities include state responder overtime, personnel travel and lodging, personal protective equipment and disease response supplies, shipping costs, and National Animal Health Laboratory Network lab expenses incurred during the outbreak response. Minnesota Board of Animal Health personnel perform quarantine issuance and notification, disease surveillance in control areas and surveillance zones, biosecurity monitoring on infected premises, monitoring of infected poultry euthanasia and carcass disposal, cleaning and disinfection monitoring, movement permits for feed and supplies into or out of control areas, stakeholder outreach, response to sick bird reports, environmental sampling, real-time disease response reporting, and incident document management.

The award funds work performed in Minnesota with a period of performance through October 22, 2026. Deliverables include facilitating timely return to normal poultry production and trade, maintaining robust biosecurity of production facilities to minimize further HPAI transmission, enabling infected premises to resume production at the earliest possible opportunity, sustaining stakeholder and consumer outreach and education, and maintaining HPAI surveillance and investigation of suspicious sick bird calls to enable earliest detection of disease re-emergence or re-introduction.

The 2026 MN board of animal health hpai emergency cooperative agreement funding will contribute to payment for unexpected costs arising from the disease response to the highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak in minnesota that began in september, 2025. These costs included state responder overtime, personnel travel and lodging expenses, personal protection equipment (PPE) and other disposable disease response supplies, various shipping costs and unexpected costs generated by the minnesota nahln (national animal health laboratory network) labs that contributed substantially to response efforts, such as lab overtime costs, shipping costs, etc. Activities to be performed: activities performed by MN 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 outbreaks in minnesota minimizes further transmission of disease to other premises and minimizes the impact, to the extent possible, to agriculture trade within minnesota and with other states. This benefits the minnesota 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 minnesota 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.