Live poultry auctions continue despite bird flu in Lancaster County, organizers take precautions

A turkey rattled in a cage as a man pulled it from the back of a pickup parked outside of a livestock auction barn at Roots Country Market on Tuesday afternoon.

Heading toward an open door at the East Hempfield Township market, the man was greeted by two women — their hair covered with nets, their shoes covered with disposable booties and their clothes covered with blue jumpsuits.

They were state employees, according to a man running the small-animal auction, and they were assigned to the barn to check sellers as a precaution against the contagious strain of avian influenza detected on at least four Lancaster County farms over the past week and a half.

The women asked sellers where their birds were grown to make sure they weren’t raised inside control zones surrounding virus-positive farms.

The women said they didn’t have permission to talk to reporters. And the man running the auction wouldn’t comment further.

“Auctions take a bad rap,” he said, worried discussions about the flu would lead to criticism of his operation.

But the state employees’ presence outside, he said, was evidence enough that the outbreak was being taken seriously and that precautions against its spread are being taken.

The virus, which has been circulating since December in the United States, was first discovered on a Lancaster County egg-layer chicken farm in mid-April, marking Pennsylvania’s first case of the illness within a commercial flock.

Since then, the virus — deemed “highly pathogenic” due to its contagiousness and lethality in poultry — has been confirmed on three additional local poultry farms requiring the depopulation of 3.5 million chickens, a combination of egg-layers and meat birds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Depopulation is a term used to describe the quick euthanization of birds in a flock in an attempt to slow the spread of the illnesses to another flock.

All four virus-positive properties in the county are in East Donegal Township, according to a state Department of Agriculture spokesperson.

State officials are investigating potential cases on a number of farms both within and outside of the county, according to a Tuesday report from Lancaster Farming, which cites a call between local agriculture officials.

Precautions at Green Dragon

The potential for additional cases kind of scares Keith Lutz, who co-runs another small-animal auction in Ephrata Township, he said.

“I’m fairly concerned,” said Lutz, who oversees sales on Fridays at the Green Dragon market.

There, weekly auctions feature “easily hundreds” of poultry animals — chickens, ducks, turkeys and peafowl, to name just a few, Lutz said. Most of the birds, he said, are grown by Lancaster County farmers, though some come from out-of-town locations, mainly neighboring counties.

All of those birds arrive at the market in the hours before the 6:30 p.m. auctions, during which buyers can bid on individual birds, Lutz said. Attendees typically number in the hundreds, too, he said.

Lately, Lutz said, many of them have been asking about the local avian influenza outbreak.

“We get a lot of questions because it’s in the news,” Lutz said. “They call in, and they ask if we are still taking poultry.”

At least for now, the answer is “yes,” Lutz said, noting that he’s aware of temporary bans on live-bird auctions in other states impacted by the virus.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture did not respond to questions about livestock auctions and the avian flu outbreak by 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Eye on control zone

A 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) quarantine zone was established by state and federal agriculture officials around each of the virus-positive properties in Lancaster County, within which the transportation of poultry and related products is restricted (requiring permits) and flocks are subjected to far greater scrutiny.

The Roots auction site sits just outside of that zone, but still within a designated surveillance area, in which greater scrutiny also applies.

At the Green Dragon auction space, maps depicting the zones have been printed to educate both sellers and attendees, Lutz said, adding that birds grown within the control areas are currently prohibited at the sale.

Other than that, it’s been business as usual, Lutz said, adding that the sale serves buyers from both within the county and out-of-town, including out of state.

On Tuesday at Roots, prospective buyers — some in boots, some in sneakers and some in sandals, roamed the poultry barn in the minutes before the auction’s official 4:30 p.m. start. They passed cages filled with birds, including chickens, quail, pheasants, ducks and turkeys. Occasionally, they’d poke at the cages to get the birds’ attention.

Avian influenza is most commonly spread when healthy birds come in contact with bodily fluids from an infected (wild or domestic) bird, state officials have said. However, it also can be spread on contaminated clothes or equipment worn and used by people.

Speaking for the Green Dragon crowd, Lutz said both poultry buyers and sellers are well aware of the outbreak and the ways in which its spread.

“You see concern,” he said, describing interactions with auction attendees.

Lutz said he’s not too bothered by out-of-town buyers because, typically, they will immediately butcher purchased birds for meat, meaning there is little chance they’ll come in contact with other poultry animals.

And precautions also are in place at Green Dragon, Lutz said, explaining the auction space and animal cages are cleaned — sprayed with a disinfectant solution — following each sale. That’s been the case since even before the current flu outbreak, he said.

In addition, government regulators regularly test birds’ health at local auctions, Lutz said.

Biosecurity practices

Lutz said he also takes his own precautions when attending the auctions, especially because he raises his own at-home poultry birds, which he shows at livestock exhibitions.

A temporary ban on the exhibition of poultry birds and eggs at local and county fairs was enacted earlier this month by state agriculture officials.

That’s probably for the best, Lutz said.

“I haven’t shown any of my birds this spring at all,” he said.

To protect his flock, Lutz said he immediately removes and washes his clothes after he returns home from an auction, and he has separate pairs of boots for tending to his birds and attending sales. That way, Lutz said he minimizes his chances of carrying an illness to his birds on contaminated clothing and footwear.

Since the start of the outbreak, experts have encouraged farmers and backyard poultry growers to implement similar protective measures called biosecurity. They include limiting nonessential access to farms; regularly cleaning farm-related clothing and equipment; not sharing equipment with other farms; and increasing sanitization for personnel and vehicles on farms.

Preaching the importance of biosecurity, Lutz said, is better than canceling auctions altogether — a move that he said would lead to financial losses for both poultry sellers and the Green Dragon.

“Poultry is a major staple of what’s sold,” he said, referring to the weekly auctions.

For perspective, Lutz explained that a typical Green Dragon auction can last 8 hours or more, but without poultry “we’d be lucky if we had a 2-hour sale.”

Still, Lutz said he wouldn’t discount the possibility of ceasing poultry sales at the Green Dragon if an outbreak was reported close to the market’s grounds.

“If something popped up really close to the auction, even if we weren't in that (control) zone, we might consider closing on our own,” he said, adding that until then, “nothing has really changed.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, a USDA site tracking the avian influenza outbreak showed that the virus had been confirmed in 239 backyard or commercial flocks across 29 states, affecting 33.07 million birds.

In rare cases, humans have contracted avian flu, but experts, including at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have said this outbreak poses a low risk to people.