A commercial egg farm in Minnesota was burned down on Saturday, leaving thousands of chickens dead, according to reports.
The fire began on Saturday evening and firefighters responded to the incident shortly after 10 p.m. at a Forsman Farms facility in Stockholm Township, Minnesota
The Wright County Sheriff’s Office said the fire came from a barn that houses chickens and manure. The main building involved in the fire was significantly damaged while surrounding buildings received light damage.
Police estimated that there were likely 200,000 chickens in the barn when the fire broke out and that deputies don’t believe that the fire was intentional.
A spokesperson for the company confirmed that chickens died in the fire, but said that no people were hurt.
“Overnight, a fire destroyed one of our barns at our Howard Lake farm. No one was injured and we are grateful that first responders were quickly on scene to put out the fire. Unfortunately, chickens were lost because of the fire. We are evaluating the extent of the damage – which appears to be confined to a single structure – as well as investigating the cause of the fire,” the spokesperson said.
This comes as poultry and egg prices have been rising across the country due to highly contagious bird flu.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, the country is enduring the worst bird flu outbreak in terms of commercial poultry deaths since 2015 caused by the deadly strain of bird flu known as H5N1.
In Iowa, the state that produces the most eggs, more than 11 million egg-laying hens have died because of the virus.
“As long as the [wild bird] migration patterns continue, there is a risk for disease to continue to be introduced to our domestic population,” said Chloe Carson, the communications director of the Iowa agriculture department.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters recently that most poultry facilities are better equipped to prevent the virus from spreading after developing stricter containment measures following the 2015 outbreak.
“The nature of the outbreaks, the size of the operations that have been impacted, the number of states that are dealing with backyard operations as opposed to commercial-sized operations, would strongly suggest that when this is all said and done, it’s going to be significantly less than what we experienced in 2014-15,” Vilsack said.
