Federal and state officials are doubling the number personnel working to eradicate the virulent Newcastle disease killing Southern California chickens, thanks in large measure to $45 million in emergency funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The new funds come in addition to $27 million previously spent on the growing epidemic. But the total, about $72 million spent or allocated so far, still falls well short of the nearly $170 million spent during the last Newcastle outbreak, in 2002-2003, when 3.2 million birds were killed – mostly through preemptive euthanasia in areas where the disease had been identified. Read more