LEWISTON Minn. — The vice president of the Minnesota Milk Producers Association, Shelly DePestel of Lewiston, discouraged any public panic over recent cases of bird flu in a dairy herd in Benton County. DePestel said that government regulators have assured her that cows recover from the infection. Even so, she admitted low-level anxiety: “What could this roll into.” Commercial turkey and chicken farmers face the greatest immediate problem. Thousands of birds and more than 1.3 million egg-laying hens were euthanized in the state in May in an effort to stop bird flu’s latest spread. Since 2022, when the disease was epidemic, 8 million birds were euthanized and the state poultry industry decimated
DePestel. Minnesota dairy industry executive.