Greg Herbruck knew 6.5 million of his birds needed to die, and fast.
But the CEO of Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch wasn’t sure how the third-generation family egg producer (one of the largest in the US) was going to get through this round of avian flu, financially or emotionally. One staffer broke down in Herbruck’s office in tears. “The mental toll on our team of dealing with that many dead chickens is just, I mean, you can’t imagine it,” Herbruck said. “I didn’t sleep. Our team didn’t sleep.”
The stress of watching tens of thousands of sick birds die of avian flu each day, while millions of others wait to be euthanized, kept everyone awake.
In April 2024, as his first hens tested positive for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1, Herbruck turned to the tried and true USDA playbook, the “stamping out” strategy that helped end the 2014-2015 bird flu outbreak, which was the largest in the US until now.
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