Bird Flu Hits Turkeys in Faulk and Beadle Counties

South Dakota stands out this week as the nation’s leader in newly reported outbreaks of bird flu:

The two outbreaks in South Dakota affect 55,400 turkeys at a facility in Faulk County and 52,600 turkeys at a facility in Beadle County. North Dakota has one outbreak affecting 60,300 turkeys in Dickey County. The other outbreaks in the last couple weeks affected a few dozen birds in a couple of backyard flocks in Georgia and New York.

APHIS continues to crank out this bird flu data despite losing 1,300 workers in the Trump-Musk government hacking last spring. The agency’s ability to collect and share data like these bird flu figures is vital to American agriculture:

[45-year APHIS veteran Kevin] Shea notes that over the years, APHIS employees have worked to successfully eradicate or keep at bay pests such as the boll weevil, a beetle that feeds on cotton buds, and New World screwworm, a parasite that burrows into the open wounds of animals. It’s recently resurfaced in Mexico.

He fears that progress could now be lost, with animal health technicians, epidemiologists, entomologists, wildlife biologists and many who supported them gone.

“It’ll be very hard to ever rebuild the animal health workforce and the plant health workforce because they’ve taken away so much of what made government service attractive to those people — stability, security and a sense of public mission,” Shea says.

…Given the depletion of key staff at APHIS, Shea presumes there was a lack of understanding among the new political leadership of what the agency does. He also presumes the Trump administration outsourced the reduction of the workforce to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, “who I’m sure have no idea,” he says.

What he would want them to know is that American agriculture has been relatively free of pests and disease in recent decades thanks in large part to the work of APHIS. And that, in turn, has given the U.S. two important things: a trade advantage in relation to the rest of the world and an abundant, cheap supply of food.

It’s easy to imagine what it would look like if the U.S. were to lose significant ground on this front. Outbreaks of avian influenza in 2025 alone have resulted in the culling of more than 30 million hens, according to USDA, sending egg prices soaring. Citrus greening disease, caused by a tiny sap-sucking insect from Asia, has already wiped out much of Florida’s orange crop.

“We’re trying to save California,” Shea says. “If we don’t have a fully functioning APHIS, that’s at risk” [Andrea Hsu, “Exodus of USDA Veterinarians and Others Drives Fears That U.S. Farms Are at Risk,” NPR, 2025.05.30].

But who needs the USDA and all those so-called experts, anyway? Just don’t let any turkeys sneeze on you… and stock up on Tofurky.