There are seven generations of Corwins in the Aquebogue, Long Island, town cemetery. Their graves overlook the farm that’s been in the family since the 1640s. Some family members’ tombstones are adorned with ducks. “I’m gonna say it was my grandfather’s idea, because he did it first,” said Doug Corwin.
It was Corwin’s great-grandfather who started raising ducks in 1908, when Long Island was famous for its duck farms. Now, Crescent Duck Farm is the only one left. It produced a million ducks a year, until two weeks ago, when bird flu shut the farm down. Corwin said, “I saw a flock one day that was great, and the next day was lethargic, wasn’t eating. It looked like something I’d never seen before.”
Dozens of state and local agricultural workers, dressed in biohazard suits, assisted in the euthanasia of the entire flock – 100,000 ducks. Whether it’s ducks or chickens, since the current strain of bird flu, H5N1, reached the United States in 2022, over 148 million birds have been ordered euthanized.
“It’s a staggering number, there is no doubt,” said Jodie Guest, a professor of epidemiology with Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta. “But it is, and always has been a policy across administrations, with the USDA, that this is how they handle infections like this among poultry. And as we’ve seen bird flu move [across] species, it becomes even more important to try to contain that infection in the flocks that it’s in, so that we don’t continue to see spread.”
Except that’s exactly what has happened. H5N1, Guest said, was in all 50 states by the end of 2023, transmitted by wild birds through their feces and saliva. “So, in 2024 we saw bird flu jump from our poultry and wild birds, to mammals, to cows. And that was a very startling change,” she said.
Until 2024, there was only one human case in the U.S. In just a few months, the number jumped to 67, with one death. Most of those cases were workers at dairy operations and poultry farms. They experienced mild symptoms.