Pennsylvania ‘on high alert’ for bird flu as egg prices drop

HARRISBURG, Pa. (CBS) — This case is in a special commonwealth: Virginia, not Pennsylvania. However Pennsylvania’s Division of Agriculture is “on excessive alert” for highly-pathogenic avian influenza, Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding instructed CBS Information Friday, partly due to final week’s confirmed case in Virginia. The rationale? 

“They’re in the identical flyway – the Atlantic flyway – as Pennsylvania,” Redding stated.

In different phrases, within the path of migrating birds, who can unfold the illness, which has prompted the deaths of practically 60 million birds – and contributed to excessive costs for every little thing from Thanksgiving turkeys final November to eggs immediately. 

Nevertheless it’s January. Why fear so early about birds flying north for the summer time? 

“You concentrate on a heat January,” Redding defined. “These birds are confused. They’re on the transfer.” 

And migration season or not, people are all the time on the transfer too. Redding’s easiest and most necessary recommendation to anybody who’s close to birds? 

“Typically the straightforward issues: Watch the place you step,” he stated. “Cowl your footwear. It is biosecurity – quite simple…. Simply good widespread sense to say, ‘The place was I? Was I near poultry?’ When you had been, do not go to your neighbor, or do not carry it again house with you.” 

The division’s new warning this week to farmers – industrial and yard alike – comes as egg costs recede from document highs. How excessive had been they and are they? 

John Mallios, proprietor of Harrisburg’s Keystone Restaurant – a diner in enterprise because the Fifties – stated he sometimes paid between $1.00 and $1.50 for a dozen extra-large eggs lately. Earlier this month, that surged as excessive as $5.20. Now he is paying $3.25, about midway between the previous regular and the height. 

Mallios hasn’t handed alongside the egg worth will increase to clients: Counting all the opposite prices of operating a restaurant, simple arithmetic confirms the essential $1.75 egg sandwich on his menu cannot probably be worthwhile. 

“I’ve really had clients strategy me to ask, why do not I elevate my costs?” Mallios stated. “I stated, ‘Effectively, I like your pondering, however I simply preserve it this fashion.’” 

The rationale? 

“I am pondering long run and pondering stability with the regulars” who are available in as usually as 5 – 6 instances every week, Mallios stated. 

The year-long avian flu outbreak has shocked many consultants in its period and depth. Final 12 months, Pennsylvania leaders established a $25 million fund to complement federal USDA assist for farmers and others impacted by the outbreak. 

“The legislature and [then-Gov. Tom Wolf] stated, ‘Let’s attempt to put collectively a restoration fund,’” Redding stated. “That is what we’ve got immediately – the one one within the nation.” 

As for newly-inaugurated Gov. Josh Shapiro? 

“One of many first conversations I had with the governor is about high-path avian influenza, to verify we’re all ready,” Redding stated. 

The final confirmed case in Pennsylvania was on Nov. 17, in keeping with division statistics. 

And as for prime egg costs?

Mallios tries to seek out the humor within the state of affairs. 

“There is a standing joke that if anyone got here in they usually had been wanting cash, I might say, ‘Give ’em an egg sandwich,” Mallios stated. “Now I say, ‘Give ’em a cheeseburger.”