Dive Brief:

• Dead chickens and turkeys killed in Iowa because of the avian flu are not wanted at a privately owned Nebraska landfill. Landfill owner Leonard Gill declined after Nebraska officials expressed worries about that plan, though he was contemplating it. They were concerned that transporting the dead birds could spread the flu to people or animals along the route to the landfill.
• Federal officials are looking for landfills to take birds that are killed in preventing the spread of the bird flu. None of the birds have been put in a landfill yet, Iowa Department of Natural Resources spokesman Kevin Baskins said.
• The state of Iowa had more than 26 million chickens killed to prevent the bird flu from spreading. Some of those corpses have been incinerated, buried on-site, or composted.

Dive Insight:

The growing problem of how to deal with millions of diseased bird corpses has reached high proportions, with tens of millions of birds needing to be buried or disposed of safely in some manner. While federal officials negotiate with landfill owners to find places to deposit them, the dead birds continue to pile up.