What Oregon's bird flu case means for your Thanksgiving turkey

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — After the first human case of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Oregon was confirmed on Friday, health officials are advising the public on what this means for poultry consumption in the state.

The person infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, was linked to a Clackamas County commercial poultry operation, where the Oregon Department of Agriculture had already confirmed the virus was in 150,000 birds, according to the Oregon Health Authority.

Officials said they would not name the commercial poultry operation or provide specific location information or give other details about the patient so as to protect the patient’s privacy.

This comes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed human cases of avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, in Washington state. A week after the Washington cases were announced, officials confirmed three of those infected had traveled to Oregon during their infectious period and were monitored during their stay.

Given these factors and with Thanksgiving just around the corner, is it safe to eat the turkey?

According to Dr. Sarah Present with Clackamas County Public Health, you should be fine as long as you follow good hygiene practices and heat the turkey to a proper internal temperature of 160 degrees.

"The main risks that we look at on raw poultry are other bacteria. Salmonella in particular, is pretty common. So really, in making sure they have good hand hygiene, I oftentimes wear gloves when I'm preparing raw poultry, but thoroughly wash your hands and any cooking surfaces afterwards. You want to use a cutting board that can easily be sanitized with bleach afterwards."

Present added that while you are more likely to get bird flu from being in direct contact with sick or dead birds or other mammals, there is another possible cause for the recent outbreaks.

"This flu virus is pretty common in wild birds at this point. So birds that are migrating along the West Coast, we can expect maybe more birds on the ground or domestic or commercial birds to be infected during the spring and fall migratory seasons. So if you do have backyard chickens or backyard poultry flock, just be aware that this is a possible risk if you have animals that seem ill."

As far as whether the seasonal flu vaccine would be effective against this strain, Present said that vaccine contains strains that are more common among humans.

"I do strongly encourage you to get the annual flu vaccine just to have decreased levels of flu overall, but this particular strain would not be in our current vaccine," she noted. "If we come to a point that we need to protect more people from this particular strain - the way that our influenza vaccines are made every year - it makes it very easy to make small adjustments to include those strains in the future, if we need to."

The U.S. has seen an ongoing outbreak of bird flu since February 2022, with 104 million birds affected in 48 states, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Overall, Oregon health officials also say coordination with local health officials, ODA and the CDC has helped them respond to animal infections by having other agencies provide personal protective equipment and training.

Stay with KOIN 6 as this story develops.