Christmas Tree Time & Restocking Birds

Christmas Tree Time & Restocking Birds. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

Like it or not, the 2015 holiday season is upon us. Stores are already festooned with decorations and Oregon is well into the Christmas tree season according to Gary McAninch, manager of ODA's Nursery and Christmas Tree Programs.

MC ANINCH:  We are about a week earlier than last year. We've already issued inspection certificates for trees going to Hawaii and we are just starting to issue them for Mexico also. We ship all around the Pacific Rim countries. We ship to Central and South America. Mexico is our largest foreign customer. They get about 12 percent of the trees harvested in Oregon annually.

Oregon remains the nation's top producer of Christmas trees.

Speaking of the holidays, remember the outbreak of bird flu earlier this year where millions of chickens and turkeys were euthanized? Now federal agricultural officials say commercial chicken and turkey farms that were infected by the bird flu have been cleared to restock. Bird flu first surfaced in December on the West Coast and spread over six months to 15 states, resulting in the death of 48 million birds. USDA's veterinarian says that commercial turkey and chicken operations among the 219 farms nationwide can restock as those farms involved have now been disinfected and tested negative for the virus. We may still see a bit of an increase in this year's Thanksgiving turkey prices.

That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.