The United States has lost more than 175 million head of commercial poultry to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) since the outbreak began in 2022.
WATT Global Media has been tracking the outbreak since it first appeared in an Indiana turkey flock in February 2022. WATT has been adding bird loss figures based off of information released by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). Those figures, which include the two most recently reported flock infections in Wisconsin and Minnesota, bring the total to 177,579,650. That number also includes commercial upland gamebird flocks, but it does not include live markets or backyard flocks. Read more