Bipartisan group of senators calling for additional funding for bird flu

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Bipartisan group of senators calling for additional funding for bird flu

A bipartisan group of US senators is pushing for more dollars to back the bird flu response high.

Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa says after the 2015 outbreak, Congress gave the USDA the authority to quickly compensate producers for depopulation.

“So I’m glad we’re not having any reimbursement issues with this outbreak, but we still need to make sure the USDA has all the tools in place.”

Grassley and Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar led their peers in a letter Monday to the chairmen of the Senate Appropriations Committee, saying that while the virus poses minimal risk to human health, it has serious implications for people US poultry farmers, rural communities and the agricultural economy have.

The letter calls for additional funding for the APHIS bird health program.

Senators from brownfield states who signed the letter include Democrats Tina Smith of Minnesota and Dick Durbin of Illinois.

To date, there have been nearly 300 cases of bird flu in 32 states in the United States.