As cases of avian influenza (HPAI) in dairy cattle continue to occur in the US, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has been working with industry to develop an event response plan to manage the risk in Canada.
If you have both dairy and poultry on your premises, or the species share an epidemiological link such as common people or equipment, the recovery time of an HPAI detection in either species will be longer.
If HPAI is detected in the dairy cattle first, the commercial poultry will:
- Be placed under quarantine.
- Be subject to baseline and on-going surveillance until the quarantine is released. Based on the timelines CFIA shared, and the clinical experience from the US, this can be 2-4 months.
- While movement of poultry is permitted with a license, placement of new birds will not be permitted on the premises until the dairy herd is no longer considered affected. There is a possibility of an exemption on a case-by-case basis. However, CFIA is recommending that new birds not be placed on these premises.
- If any of the surveillance tests comes back positive on the poultry, the usual HPAI in poultry response will begin (zoning, depopulation, surveillance, etc.).
If HPAI is detected first in poultry, the usual poultry response (i.e. depopulation, zoning etc.) will apply. The dairy herd will also be required to undergo testing, and these results could impact the speed of removing quarantines and back-to-business for the poultry operation.
- If any surveillance tests on the dairy herd are positive for HPAI, the C&D on the poultry premise is halted once primary decontamination is met until the time the cattle are no longer considered affected.
- The cattle can only be re-tested after 2 milestones have been reached. These include a minimum of 14 days in which the cattle are free of clinical signs of HPAI, and 30 days after the initial detection in cattle. Depending how long the cattle continue to test positive for, this will delay the response activities on the poultry farm and the release of the farm quarantine.
Further information can be found in the Avian Influenza handbook, which is also available through your provincial board.
Reminder: Extra Biosecurity for Farms with Multi-Species
Any contaminated surface can be a vector to transmit the virus.
Farms with poultry and livestock should take extra precautions to prevent cross contamination:
- Keep poultry away from livestock.
- Don’t share equipment between barns.
- Different farm personnel should be used in the dairy and poultry barns.
- If farm personnel must go between the dairy and poultry barns, then each time they should:
- Change footwear upon entering the poultry barn (as is currently required),
- Change clothing prior to entering the poultry barn, and
- Wash hands thoroughly prior to entering the poultry barn.
- Keep livestock away from ponds and wild waterfowl.
- Monitor livestock for symptoms and report illnesses immediately to your veterinarian.
- Refer to CFIA’s guidance for more information.
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