Nearly 53 million U.S. birds have died this year due to avian flu, marking the worst outbreak in national history and fueling the holiday turkey shortage.
Since January, 52.48 million birds in 46 states have died because of the virus itself or because they were killed to curb exposure of other birds, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a Tuesday report. The vast majority were poultry, though several thousand were wild birds, according to federal data.
