State tracking down 1,000 baby geese and ducks for destruction

State agriculture officials are tracking down for destruction 1,000 baby geese and ducks that escaped from shipping containers and were distributed to new homes throughout Utah without being tested for disease.

State Veterinarian Michael Marshall said about 95 percent of the birds have been located.

He said that because it is impractical to submit each chick to a battery of tests, they must be returned to their original owner or destroyed. The Montana owner, whom he would not identify, does not want the birds back, he said.

"This is very serious. We've been talking about avian influenza for over a year," Marshall said.

The birds will be killed humanely, but Larry Lewis, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, said he didn't know what method would be used.

"They're a biosecurity risk," Lewis said Thursday. "In the interest of public health and animal health our department is having the animals euthanized."

He said the risk of diseases such as avian flu and salmonella is too great to take any other action.

"People are asking, 'What is the state and what is the federal government doing to protect them?"' Lewis said. "This is one of the many things we are doing to prevent AI (avian influenza) from entering the U.S."

Utah has about 5 million egg-laying hens and 6 million turkeys, which the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food's Division of Animal Industry works to keep free of disease.

Uinta Basin resident Buffy Elliason, who was asked to give back about a dozen goslings, said destroying them "just isn't right."

She said when the baby geese had to be returned, her children became distraught.

"They told us they had not been tested and must be quarantined," she said.

"Then they decided rather than testing them, it would be better to round them up and destroy them," she said. "They are just going to kill them — and they're babies."

The mishap occurred last week when SkyWest Airlines noticed the cargo it was carrying from Montana to Kansas was leaking goose and duck waste. About 1,000 birds were unloaded from the airplane and delivered to the downtown Salt Lake City post office, where the soggy boxes began to break apart, Marshall said.

"The postmaster should have called us," Marshall said. "But he got some (animal) rehab people to take them."

A message left by The Associated Press at the Montana Department of Agriculture on Thursday was not immediately returned.