Aquebogue duck farm owner pressing feds to approve vaccines to protect poultry

The owner of Long Island’s last remaining duck farm is pressing federal regulators to allow currently available vaccines to help protect U.S. poultry farms in the wake a devastating bird flu outbreak on his farm last month that led to the euthanization of his entire flock.

"We need a vaccine!" Doug Corwin, owner of Crescent Duck Farm in Aquebogue, wrote in a letter to newly named EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Wednesday.

Current federal policies for dealing with the disease — killing large numbers of birds — at the farm level have been ineffective, Corwin wrote, necessitating consideration of vaccines.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture "policy of euthanizing flocks is not working," Corwin wrote to Zeldin. "Vaccines are available and being used in Europe for Avian Flu. We must start allowing farmers this protection."

The letter also will go out to other federal, state and local officials, Corwin said. 

Corwin said resistance to vaccines has come chiefly from large-scale "corporate agriculture" concerns, which are "hugely worried about losing exports. This has led to the prolonging and spreading of this outbreak."

"Something needs to change," Corwin concluded. "We cannot go on like this. I am heartbroken over laying off 48 workers to date, with more to be laid off soon, along with the gut-wrenching sadness of having to terminate our ducks."

Corwin last month was forced to lay off 48 workers, some of whom had been with the farm for decades, and euthanize his entire flock of 99,000 birds after tests confirmed a bird flu outbreak there. The farm was able to save upward of 10,000 sanitized eggs that will be hatched off the farm in the hopes of reviving the operation, which has been in business since 1908.

"Without our genetics" in these salvaged eggs, "we cannot survive," Corwin wrote.

The euthanization effort was overseen by USDA and New York State Agriculture and Markets regulators, and the farm is under quarantine as Corwin works to further sanitize an operation that had, he noted, already been "very bio-secure." There's also a 10-kilometer quarantine around the farm that limits the sale of poultry, as far away as Riverhead. It's expected to be lifted in weeks. 

"We felt that we took the precautions necessary to prevent this virus that has ravaged poultry flocks in the United States since 2022," Corwin wrote Zeldin. Mature ducks were raised in fully enclosed barns not accessible to wild birds, which some say have been vectors of the disease.

Corwin noted that in the past three years, more than 148 million domestic birds, including chickens, turkeys and ducks, "have been depopulated after Avian Flu detections. This has shaken supply chains and [cost] the American consumer hugely in egg and poultry inflation, along with USDA indemnifications to affected farms."

Ducks euthanized at Crescent Farm are being composted on site, Corwin said in an interview Tuesday, with temperatures high enough to eradicate the disease. It’s all under the supervision of the USDA.

Corwin told Zeldin that Crescent Duck Farm, with community and other support and successful hatchings of salvaged duck eggs, could be back producing ducks for the marketplace by 2026.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.