As Terri Anderson collected eggs from some of her 100 laying hens on a recent morning, she talked of bird flu fears, the onslaught of large production farms and the desire of Americans to try and control everything around them.

“I don’t want to (downplay) the threat of bird flu to humans, but we should realize that there’s no way to stop the spread of a virus, whatever it is. You can slow it down, but you can’t stop it,” said Anderson, who operates Valley Veggies, an organic farm west of Mankato off Highway 68.

Anderson feels unfairly besieged by officials who suggest that free-roaming chickens are at greater risk of getting and spreading deadly flu virus than large corporate farms, where turkeys and chickens don’t have contact with wild birds.

“My opinion is when you keep animals indoors, it’s wrong. Anytime you put animals or people indoors with no sunshine, fresh air or exercise, you compromise their immune systems. There are more diseases.”

The corporate farm versus free range argument aside, everyone raising fowl is thinking about bird flu.

Plans in place

If deadly bird flu shows up in America, officials think they have plans to quickly identify and contain it.

State and federal agencies, turkey and chicken growing associations, universities and others have for months been intensifying efforts to track wild birds flying from Alaska for signs of the flu strain, setting up plans for destroying barns full of turkeys or chickens if the disease is detected in a flock, and getting word out to small producers to monitor their flocks.

“This is something we’re used to dealing with,” said Steve Olson, executive director of the Minnesota Turkey Growers and Broiler and Egg Association. “We’ve had a surveillance program looking for avian flu for more than 30 years.”

Indeed, bird flu has always been around. There are some 145 strains of it that affect wild and domestic birds, often causing no danger even to the birds carrying the virus.

But it is the virulent strain — H5N1 — that is spreading through Asia, Europe and Africa that is worrying officials. It has killed hundreds of millions of birds and 110 people who have had close contact with infected birds.

The greatest concern for public health officials is that the virus could mutate and jump from human to human, something that would create a flu pandemic with the potential to last for years and kill millions of people.

Early detection

For now, the plan has been to focus on detecting the strain if it gets to the United States and to quickly contain it to keep it from spreading to more birds.

Michelle Powell, a Department of Natural Resources wildlife disease specialist, is working with federal and other state agencies to monitor wild birds for the disease.