Iowa leads the nation with egg production, but this spring’s outbreak of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, or bird flu, has left the Iowa poultry industry short on its normal egg production.  Poultry producers are finding it difficult to get back to the usual egg production standards.  Back in May of 2021, Iowa’s egg production was listed at 1.267 billion eggs.  This past May, the count was at 913 million eggs, or a 28 percent drop from a year ago figures.  Iowa saw 13 million birds that died from the bird flu outbreak.  Kevin Stiles, the executive director of the Iowa Poultry Association says the industry was hurt not only by the bird flu, but also by the COVID pandemic.  Stiles says the industry was able to learn some lessons from the 2015 bird flu outbreak, and fortunately, the outbreak in 2022 was not as severe.  Stiles says it was unfortunate for those poultry producers that were hit by the bird flu, however, he says this time around, the outbreak wasn’t as wide spread as in 2015, and he says the industry took some preventative measures to limit the spread of the bird disease.  The Iowa Egg official says meetings are being organized for this summer in order to discuss additional ways to mitigate the bird flu outbreak for the future.