(SRN NEWS/AP/97.5 GLORY FM) – New York’s Long Island was once synonymous with “duck” in the culinary world. Now it may lose its last commercial farm.
The avian flu outbreak that has led to the slaughter of millions of birds at U.S. poultry farms (including two in northeast Georgia) and driven up the price of eggs struck the Crescent Duck Farm this week, leading federal officials to order the destruction of the operation’s entire flock.
Doug Corwin, whose family has owned the roughly 140-acre farm since the 1640s, said Friday that a multiday culling of about 100,000 birds has been completed at the now-quarantined barns in Aquebogue.
His remaining staff will thoroughly sanitize the facility, a process that could take months.
“We’re just stunned right now,” Corwin, 66, said Friday by phone. “It’s a very, very sad time. We’re trying our best to work our way through this, one step at a time.”
He said the family will have to reckon with the future of the fourth-generation business, which was established in 1908 and is tucked among the vineyards and agricultural lands of Long Island’s North Fork, about 80 miles (129 km) east of Manhattan.
Corwin said he was forced to lay off 47 of the farm’s 75-member staff, including many who had worked there for decades as the farm’s revenue cratered.
You can read the full story here including more about the history of duck farming on Long Island: Long Island’s last duck farm weighs closure after outbreak leads to killing of entire flock – SRN News
Just last week, the first evidence of bird flu in commercial poultry flocks in Georgia turned up in Elbert County. Second Ga. poultry flock found contaminated with bird flu