After post here from Jennifer MacLeod, a smallholder with poultry in Canada, seems worth starting thread on relationships between farms, H5N1 and wild birds.

H5N1 (of Guangdong goose 1996 lineage) that's causing trouble is a product of poultry farms: evolved in them, to become a "vicious chicken killer" (Wendy Orent). Now, however, as well as impacts on wild birds - and impacts on wild birds arising from panic over H5N1 - getting farms affected too.

Here, not the place for terrible impacts on farmers who have H5N1 devastating their flocks; instead, more re biosecurity, especially concerning small farmers - who in places such as Canada and Holland are having to take measures to guard their flocks from H5N1 infection by wild birds.

The post from Jenny:

I am on Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada. Our small farmers are fighting the inane regulations of both provincial and federal governments. Already in Quebec, free-range and organic poultry have been banned from public sale as of January 1st, 2006. Farmers in the Province had six weeks to comply with these regulations brought out in November 2005. It orders all poultry to be raised for public sale must be raised "under cover" as a protection from Avian Influenza.
We in BC are trying to head off similar Provincial restrictions, and are battling new directives which affect our abattoir situations. This is an area where we have had NO incidents or complaints concerning tainted foods, but the new upgrades to bring the smallhold farmer into an area of "high bar" requirements (equal to the exporters requirements) are so cost inhibitive as to leave half, if not more, of our smallhold farmers lookjing at closing shop.
This means a great reduction of suppliers in the fastest growing market in North America, the free-range and organic meat and egg market.
I have talked with Christine Bilg, the head of the Dutch Smallhold Farmers Alliance who have made presentations to the World Health Organization on behalf of Small Farmholds in her country and across Europe. She cites similar problems for smallhold farmers in Europe.
It seems to me we are really looking at the old scenario of agri-business against any other meat and egg producer. It smacks of the corporation solution (Monsanto) versus the independant food producer, the genetic diversity that this embraces and the threat to smallhold farms as a way of life.
I have been researching this for three years now. Think about these implications. Is it possible that we are looking at a campaign to allow only agri-food produfers to feed the public?

article by Jenny:
QUESTIONS ON IMMUNITY AND AVIAN INFLUENZA
And Its Affects on Sustainable Farming And Domestic Poultry
Jenny MacLeod, Gabriola Island, BC

IMMUNITY AND DOMESTIC POULTRY

In 2004 there were over thirty-five commercial agri-food barns that were infected with Avian Influenza in the Lower Mainland section of British Columbia. Both low-pathology and high-pathology forms of AI were discovered in the same barn at the same time in some cases. In each barn birds were quickly killed or incapacitated by AI and finally destroyed by Canadian Food Inspection Agency employees.

All around these barns were commercial free-range, healthy backyard flocks in the open air.

Thousands of commercial backyard flocks were tested. Almost all the backyard flocks did not exhibit symptoms of illness. The birds in these flocks did not even carry ANTIBODIES for AI. We know this because the only test administered for AI was a test for AI antibodies, not a test that determined the active presence of the viable AI virus.

Nevertheless these healthy flocks were destroyed by the CFIA on the basis of PROXIMITY (five and then ten kilometers from an AI infected site) to sources of infection, not on the basis of infection.

I have these questions:

1 If AI was introduced in the open air by contact with wild birds, why weren't all the surrounding outdoor backyard flocks affected? Did some factor prevent them from contracting AI? Presumably if they were exposed to the focal AI virus outbreak they also would have died.

2 Was AI introduced to the agri-barn birds through another vector?

3 If the backyard flocks had been quarantined instead of being destroyed immediately by CFIA personnel, would they have eventually contracted AI or would they have represented a "control group" that survived AI and could have been studied to further our understanding of AI in domestic bird populations?

4 There is no data available that outbred birds are more resistant to Highly Pathogenic AI. If the backyard flocks did not present antibodies for AI (of any type) that means that they never had any form of AI or that the birds were totally resistant to the AI virus. If the latter statement is true, could they pass on this genetic resistance to their offspring?
[Martin: total resistance v unlikely I believe; seems H5N1 highly lethal to all it infects, bar - with some strains - at least a proportion of ducks]

5 Since the hybrid birds in the agri-barns were genetically uniform, did this make it easier for the AI virus to kill its avian host?

6 There is an increasing prevalence of Highly Pathogenic AI strains that thrive in intensive rearing situations. Since the hybrid birds in the agri-barn were genetically uniform did this make it easier for the low-path AI virus to mutate into a high-path form of the AI virus?

7 Unfortunately when the environment harbours highly pathogenic forms of AI (as is occurring in Eurasia) backyard flocks can then become part of the problem. If agri-barns were kept isolated from surrounding farms by legislated required buffer zones, would this remove the threat to smallhold farms and their livestock?

AI IMMUNITY IN WATERFOWL

At one time wild geese and ducks were singled out as the main vector for AI as they flew their migratory routes. Later it was realized that these birds were victims of the disease as much as domestic poultry and waterfowl were victims of AI. As I understand it the virus is carried in the wild bird population.
[Martin: seems it kills most wild birds too. Some ducks carrying it, but maybe only few strains, and it's rare in the wild]

Wild and domestic waterfowl carry AI antibodies (low pathology AI). This is so common that the CFIA stated in 2005 at the end of the AI incident in the Fraser Valley, that they were not going to test for it.

I have these questions:

1 If antibodies for AI are common in domestic waterfowl, does this mean that these birds have been individually infected (they have been at some time in their lives infected with low-path AI) or have the antibodies been passed down genetically from parent to offspring, and if so, for how many generations?
[Martin: as I understand it, are infected individually; low path AI pretty common in wild - almost like common cold in humans?]

2 What kinds of low-path AI are they protected against?

3 Can this be taken as immunity and can this be bred into further generations of domestic birds?
[May be a few types of AI that enable resistance to H5N1 in ducks - evidence pretty slight so far; but I don't believe passed down in DNA.]

4 Is genetic diversity a factor in creating stronger waterfowl populations? Can we prove this?
[Doesn't seem to be. Instead, seems ducks have some resistance - and then maybe only some duck species, to certain H5N1 stains]

5 If they are immune to low-path AI does this mean they are protected against the high-path strains?
[Probably not, unless v few specific strains, in a few ducks; see above]

6 Do the high-pathology forms of the virus exist separately as a rule in domestic birds or do they evolve from low-path opportunity-rich viral environments?
[H5N1 is unusual in being HPAI that has often entered wild bird populations; and can be carried by wild birds - tho perhaps not sustained by them eg the swans in Europe: as and when they die, will virus in the wild die with them, needing further infection from poultry]


I believe that these are questions that should have been asked two years ago.

In the final days of 2005 I saw another brutal destruction of two barns full of domestic ducks in the Fraser Valley after the discovery of low-path AI antibodies in a few of the birds.

I have seen restrictions that prohibit free-range poultry and egg sales to the public and restrictions of one breed of poultry per farm in the Province of Quebec come into effect.

The CFIA still recommends that the only safe way to raise poultry for public consumption is "under cover" which entails the purchase of the barn unit, the individual cages for the birds, the mechanical means to feed the poultry, water the poultry and in the case of eggs, conveyor belts to deliver the eggs to the containers for sale to the public.

It means the hybrid chicks must be purchased from similar agri-barn environments, forced to grow to a set feed to meat ratio by the inclusion of hormones in their growth regimen, dosed with broad spectrum antibiotics for the duration of their brief lives and left in their crowded cages in the miasma of their own effluent until they are "harvested" and the agri-barn environment is finally cleaned.

This is the ideal of the CFIA in animal husbandry. This is what farmers who have raised poultry for meat and eggs all their lives will be reduced to, or lose their farms.

Why isn't the Canadian Food Inspection Agency asking questions about Avian Influenza instead of blindly pursuing recommendations which have more of the feel of large corporate interest lobbying behind them than scientific study?

I believe that until these questions are answered we are simply allowing a situation to continue that has already proved disastrous for the poultry in agri-barn conditions and the people involved with their production.

There was a huge crisis in BC agriculture in 2004 in the Fraser Valley. Economically it was a true bio-disaster. Millions of birds were killed, thousands for no better reason than proximity to infected agri-barns. Hundreds of smallhold farmers never got compensation for their stocks of rare or endangered birds, or adequate compensation for their breeding stocks. Some stocks were so rare as to be irretrievably lost to the farmers that had nurtured bloodlines for generations.

We did not just lose birds in B.C. We lost the people who raised the birds. We lost smallhold farmers who were sources of free-range poultry and eggs, breeders of the heritage poultry and rare breeds. For some of these good, dedicated people the disaster was too great, the blow of losing healthy birds for no good reason was crippling in the extreme, financially and emotionally.

And yet here we are in 2006 with the same vulnerable hybrid poultry, the same opportunity-rich environment for Avian Influenza infection and possible mutation to high-pathology AI in the agri-barns and the same CFIA recommendations for keeping poultry "under cover".

Free range poultry for meat and egg production and organically raised poultry are being treated as dangerous to the public in at least one province (Quebec) in 2006.

I am left with my biggest questions:

Why is the Federal Government ignoring the need for a study of AI and its causes and effects on small-scale agriculture and animal husbandry vs. large scale agri-business agriculture and animal husbandry?

Why is the Federal Government trying to make intensive farming manageable rather than working on farming practices that would make farming into a sustainable resource?

Why is the Federal Government under the auspices of the CFIA so bent on eradicating free-range and organic farming in this country?

It seems nothing of any value has been learned from this terrible agricultural, economic and public disaster, nor will anything be learned until somebody asks these questions and finds the answers.

Post edited by: martin, at: 2006/02/17 03:26<br><br>Post edited by: martin, at: 2006/02/17 03:32

article in The Guardian includes:

iseases have spread from wildlife to humans throughout history but we now interact with animals in a very different way, says Danielle Nierenberg, a researcher with the US Worldwatch Institute. &quot;In the last 40 years the world has gone through a livestock revolution, not unlike what happened to crops with the green revolution,&quot; she says.

Since 1961, she explains, worldwide livestock has increased 38%, to about 4.3 billion today. The global poultry population has quadrupled in that time, to 17.8 billion birds, and the number of pigs has roughly trebled to 2 billion. As the numbers of animals bred for food have vastly grown in a very short period, humankind's relationship with them has changed.

&quot;Raising animals has morphed into an industrial endeavour that bears little relation to landscape or natural tendencies of the animals. Wherever [industrial farming] is introduced it creates ecological and public health disasters,&quot; she says.

Others argue that intensive confinement of animals promotes emerging viruses, stokes the development of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria and can transform animals into disease &quot;factories&quot;. According to Hans-Gerhard Wagner, an officer of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation based in Thailand, the &quot;intensive industrial farming of livestock is now an opportunity for emerging diseases&quot;.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/birdflu/story/0,,1715517,00.html

Just read new report from Grain, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.
Looks excellent. Full report at:
Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis

Here's press release:

New from GRAIN
26 February 2006

GRAIN report says global poultry industry is the root of the bird flu crisis
GRAIN PRESS RELEASE

REPORT SAYS GLOBAL POULTRY INDUSTRY IS THE ROOT OF THE BIRD FLU CRISIS

Small-scale poultry farming and wild birds are being unfairly blamed for the bird flu crisis now affecting large parts of the world. A new report from GRAIN shows how the transnational poultry industry is the root of the problem and must be the focus of efforts to control the virus. [1]

The spread of industrial poultry production and trade networks has created ideal conditions for the emergence and transmission of lethal viruses like the H5N1 strain of bird flu. Once inside densely populated factory farms, viruses can rapidly become lethal and amplify. Air thick with viral load from infected farms is carried for kilometres, while integrated trade networks spread the disease through many carriers: live birds, day-old-chicks, meat, feathers, hatching eggs, eggs, chicken manure and animal feed. [2]

&quot;Everyone is focused on migratory birds and backyard chickens as the problem,&quot; says Devlin Kuyek of GRAIN. &quot;But they are not effective vectors of highly pathogenic bird flu. The virus kills them, but is unlikely to be spread by them.&quot;

For example, in Malaysia, the mortality rate from H5N1 among village chicken is only 5%, indicating that the virus has a hard time spreading among small scale chicken flocks. H5N1 outbreaks in Laos, which is surrounded by infected countries, have only occurred in the nation's few factory farms, which are supplied by Thai hatcheries. The only cases of bird flu in backyard poultry, which account for over 90% of Laos' production, occurred next to the factory farms.

&quot;The evidence we see over and over again, from the Netherlands in 2003 to Japan in 2004 to Egypt in 2006, is that lethal bird flu breaks out in large scale industrial chicken farms and then spreads,&quot; Kuyek explains.

The Nigerian outbreak earlier this year began at a single factory farm, owned by a Cabinet minister, distant from hotspots for migratory birds but known for importing unregulated hatchable eggs. In India, local authorities say that H5N1 emerged and spread from a factory farm owned by the country's largest poultry company, Venkateshwara Hatcheries.

A burning question is why governments and international agencies, like the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, are doing nothing to investigate how the factory farms and their byproducts, such as animal feed and manure, spread the virus. Instead, they are using the crisis as an opportunity to further industrialise the poultry sector. Initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically-modified chickens. The web of complicity with an industry engaged in a string of denials and cover-ups seems complete.

&quot;Farmers are losing their livelihoods, native chickens are being wiped out and some experts say that we're on the verge of a human pandemic that could kill millions of people,&quot; Kuyek concludes. &quot;When will governments realise that to protect poultry and people from bird flu, we need to protect them from the global poultry industry?&quot;

[1] The full briefing, &quot;Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis&quot;, is available at http://www.grain.org/go/birdflu.
Spanish and French translations will be posted shortly.

[2] Chicken faeces and bedding from poultry factory floors are common ingredients in animal feed.

Dear Martin,

Much like the recent article by Laurie Garrett, this article is peppered with statements and half truths that do not accord with the situation on the ground.

Of particular importance is the fact that much of the disease in smallholder poultry goes undiagnosed. In countries with poorly developed veterinary services it is only when a case occurs in a commercial farm that the problem is diagnosed and brought to the attention of veterinary authorities.

A clear distinction needs to be made between farms that have in place sound biosecurity systems, which usually remain free from disease, and those where production systems are inadequate to prevent entry of pathogens.

I note that Lao PDR has been used again as an example of a place where all outbreaks occurred in commercial flocks - but these were not high level, biosecure farms.

Much of the problem in Asia has been caused by farms developing to service the rapidly growing urban demands for poultry without concurrent enhancement of farm biosecurity (i.e. a backyard flock grows bigger). This is not being driven by the big multinational companies but by smallholders who see the economic benefit of servicing these markets. These farmers grow more birds under fairly primitive conditions and do not implement appropriate disease control measures. The solution to this problem is to enhance the biosecurity of these farms.

This article also suggests that the virus needs to circulate in poultry to become pathogenic. This is not the case with the H5N1 viruses circulating currently. These are already highly pathogenic from the moment they enter a flock and have been since 1996.

As I have stated many times this is predominatly a disease of poultry but it is incorrect to blame its emergence on intensive farming.


Regards,

Les Sims<br><br>Post edited by: martin, at: 2006/03/01 15:59

Hi Les:

Surely Guangdong goose 96 H5N1 was already a product of poultry farms.
With culling etc having not eradicated it, now like genie that's out of the bottle.

Martin<br><br>Post edited by: martin, at: 2006/02/28 23:57

Dear Martin,

We still do not know the precise origin of Goose GD-96. There is a black hole in the data prior to this so the following is by necessity speculative but based on the best information we have.

I beleive that this virus initially emerged in geese. Goose raising in Guangdong involved a mixture of semi-intensive and extensive rearing. On one large farm I visited geese were reared in cages housing multiple geese on a farm surrounding a large dam in cages. After an initial rearing period on the farm they were sent out to graze paddies for about a month before returning to cages for final fattening - not exactly biosecure.

If we assume that this virus moved from its original wild waterfowl origin (originally as a low path virus) into geese there had to be an opportuinity for this to occur, which this type of farming provided.

Given the way poultry are sold in China and the consequent large amount of movement of live poultry, this virus would have spread through the live bird markets. It is probably in these markets where the virus acquired the genes that converted it to the 1997 strain poultry strain. Some say this happened in Hong Kong live poultry markets - it might have, but I remain sceptical on this. We will never know for sure but the Hong Kong experieince showed how these viruses could be easily propagated under the unsanitary conditions that existed in the markets then.

The original 1996-type virus persisted in geese until about year 2000 by which time it under went reassortment with other &quot;avian&quot; viruses of unknown origin (again presumed to be from aquatic birds) but these changes allowed the virus to multiply more readily in ducks, which was probably a key change in its genesis and further spread. It provided a much wider range of hosts, given the much larger number of ducks that are reared, and also provided the opportunity for infection of a wider range of wild birds.

Very few ducks are reared in intensive farms - they are reared on ponds, channels and paddy fields providing ample opportunity for exchange of viruses between domestic and wild birds. These ducks were sold live also providing ample opportunities for exchange of viruses between different species in the uncontrolled live bird markets in the region. What we do know is that from 1999 onwards a wide range of different reassortants arose including the Z genotype which was first recorded in Guangxi in 2001 apparently in ducks.

We don't know exactly where all this occurred but it is likely that this involved transfer of viruses from geese to ducks to chickens and back again because the more recent viruses have features in the &quot;N&quot; gene that indicate adaptation to terrestrial poultry (the deletion of amino acids in the stalk of the NA protein).

My overall assessment is that the H5N1 viruses that have emerged did not originate in large industrial type farms but in semi-intensive and extensive farms and large live bird markets in which different species of poultry were mixed and housed together long enough for exchange of viruses/viral genes to occur.


Regards,

Les

Dear Martin,

Thank you for sharing the response from Dr Sims. Unfortunately, Dr. Sims was commenting on our press release and not our full report, which may have generated some confusion. I hope that, in the future, contributors to your forum, especially those with expert credentials, take the time to read the report before commenting. Nevertheless, I wish to address some of the points that Dr. Sims made.

Dr. Sims writes:

Of particular importance is the fact that much of the disease in smallholder poultry goes undiagnosed. In countries with poorly developed veterinary services it is only when a case occurs in a commercial farm that the problem is diagnosed and brought to the attention of veterinary authorities.

Dr. Sims appears to be speculating here. To my knowledge, there are no studies that show that much of the disease goes undiagnosed in smallholder poultry. To the contrary, what we have seen in many countries is smallholders coming forward to authorities to ask about the mysterious deaths of poultry on their farms, while the commercial farms take steps to cover-up and deny bird flu outbreaks on theirs. In Japan, for instance, authorities only found out about a bird flu outbreak at one of the country's biggest commercial farms because of an anonymous call. In Thailand, bird flu was denied by the government and the industry for months while small farms were begging for answers. In India, the farm where the first outbreak occurred and which is owned by South Asia's biggest poultry multinational claimed it was another disease and pointed to testing done at its own labs, which was later contradicted by independent tests. Yet, despite this track record, the industry remains largely self-regulated and, even in Indonesia, where bird flu is killing people, authorities still have trouble getting access to the big commercial operations. All of this and more is in the report.

Let me offer my own speculation: much of the outbreaks on commercial farms go unreported.

Dr. Sims continues:

A clear distinction needs to be made between farms that have in place sound biosecurity systems, which usually remain free from disease, and those where production systems are inadequate to prevent entry of pathogens.

I note that Lao PDR has been used again as an example of a place where all outbreaks occurred in commercial flocks - but these were not high level, biosecure farms.

Much of the problem in Asia has been caused by farms developing to service the rapidly growing urban demands for poultry without concurrent enhancement of farm biosecurity (i.e. a backyard flock grows bigger). This is not being driven by the big multinational companies but by smallholders who see the economic benefit of servicing these markets. These farmers grow more birds under fairly primitive conditions and do not implement appropriate disease control measures. The solution to this problem is to enhance the biosecurity of these farms.

There are elements to what Dr. Sims says that I would agree with, however, it is important to bear in mind that most of the mid-sized farms that Dr. Sims is talking about are tightly integrated into the production systems of multinationals, generally as contract production operations. To suggest that these contract production operations are the result of small backyard farmers eagerly pursuing bigger farms is certainly a &quot;half-truth&quot;, to borrow his words. Multinationals such as Charoen Pokphand and others have pushed aggressively over the years to promote this model and governments have supported its development through agricultural banks and a whole range of incentives and regulations. Look at Thailand, where the Department of Livestock, a major source of chicks in the country, is only selling chicks to farmers in lots of thousands. Moreover, in many countries, such as Laos, Burma or Nigeria, the large commercial farms are generally not operated by your average farmers, but by businessmen and members of the political establishment.

I'd rather not get into a lengthy discussion about how much such commercial operations actually contribute to food security and economic development, but, to quote Hans Wagner, Senior Animal Health and Production Officer with the FAO's Asia-Pacific office: &quot;The main beneficiaries of the demand surge [for meat in Asia] are large-scale, urban, capital-intensive producers and processors and urban middle and upper class consumers. The overwhelming majority of the poor do not benefit.&quot;

But let's get back to this idea of biosecurity. Bird flu, whether H5N1 or other viruses, is no stranger to modern, supposedly &quot;biosecure&quot; operations.. In our report we list a few outbreaks of bird flu that have occurred on modern factory farms: Australia (1976, 1985, 1992, 1994, 1997), USA (1983, 2002, 2004), Great Britain (1991), Mexico (1993-1995), Hong Kong (1997), Italy (1999), Chile (2002), Netherlands (2003) and Canada (2004). In the case of the H5N1 virus, outbreaks have happened on plenty of factory farms run by multinationals: India, Vietnam, China, etc.

Which brings me to Dr. Sims' next point:

This article also suggests that the virus needs to circulate in poultry to become pathogenic. This is not the case with the H5N1 viruses circulating currently. These are already highly pathogenic from the moment they enter a flock and have been since 1996.
- note: see above message from Dr Sims, re emergence of 1996 virus

This is not what we say in our report. We do not say that H5N1 needs to circulate in poultry before becoming pathogenic. What we say is that highly-pathogenic viruses are not generated in backyard flocks but in the crowded, genetically uniform, and highly susceptible flocks of factory farms. It is well-documented that low-pathogenic viruses evolve into highly-pathogenic viruses within factory farms, even in ultra-modern &quot;biosecure&quot; farms. This is the likely source of the highly-pathogenic H5N1 virus. Our point is that new highly-pathogenic viruses (bird flu or other) can emerge from these farms at any point and there's no reason to think that we won't soon see a new H5 or H7 virus on the loose.

What we also say is that factory farms amplify the disease in ways that backyard flocks and wild birds do not have the capacity to. On a factory farm the mortality rate is regularly 100%; it is almost always much lower in backyard farms. The viral load that infected factory farms generate can then spread rapidly through the many channels that flow in and out of the factory farm and that flow far and wide-- live animals, chicks, hatching eggs, feed, machinery, etc.

Fundamentally, the biosecurity solution that Dr Sims appears to be proposing locks us into a vicious cycle. Breeches happen in the biosecurity of a factory farm, this is followed by calls for tighter controls, leading to new expenses, bigger farms, and more drastic interventions, such as bans on outdoor poultry and transgenic chickens-- which researchers at Cambridge University are already pursuing. And as the cycle goes on, the potential consequences grow ever larger, not just in terms of the potential for the release of pandemic viruses, but also on the ground, in the destruction of small farms, biodiversity and local food systems. In our report we point out that in Viet Nam the FAO admits that the implementation of one element of its proposed restructuring plan for the poultry sector (&quot;production zones&quot would result in the loss of income of potentially one million small commercial producers.

As experience with other poultry diseases, such as Newcastle Disease, has shown, small farms can effectively manage poultry diseases and keep losses to a minimum. They have the added advantage of being run by small farmers-- providing them with a direct source of income, food security, and dignity.

As we write in our report:

&quot;Backyard farming is not an idle pastime for landowners. It is the crux of food security and farming income for hundreds of millions of rural poor in Asia and elsewhere, providing a third of the protein intake for the average rural household. Nearly all rural households in Asia keep at least a few chickens for meat, eggs and even fertilizer and they are often the only livestock that poor farmers can afford. The birds are thus critical to their diversified farming methods, just as the genetic diversity of poultry on small farms is critical to the long-term survival of poultry farming in general.&quot;

Backyard poultry production is far more valuable to the people of the countries affected by bird flu than the large factory farms. Effective measures need to be taken to protect these systems from bird flu, even if this means putting the brakes on factory farming and looking to more sustainable and diverse means of poultry production. Unfortunately governments are doing the opposite-- sacrificing backyard poultry farming and small farmers to protect a politically powerful industry.

-Devlin Kuyek
GRAIN

The full GRAIN briefing, &quot;Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis&quot;, is available at http://www.grain.org. Spanish and French translations will be posted shortly.

from Richard Thomas; works with Birdlife International, here in his personal capacity:

Of particular importance is the fact that much of the disease in smallholder poultry goes undiagnosed. In countries with poorly developed veterinary services it is only when a case occurs in a commercial farm that the problem is diagnosed and brought to the attention of veterinary authorities.

Where's his evidence for this? There's circumstantial evidence this is not true in the Nigerian case, and I find it hard to believe in several other countries too.

A clear distinction needs to be made between farms that have in place sound biosecurity systems, which usually remain free from disease, and those where production systems are inadequate to prevent entry of pathogens.

So, an admission that even those with sound biosecurity systems only &quot;usually remain free from disease&quot;. Not always then - and what happens when they get it? They're the biggest single producers who export the furthest.

I note that Lao PDR has been used again as an example of a place where all outbreaks occurred in commercial flocks - but these were not high level, biosecure farms.

USDA and FAO both used this term to describe them.

Much of the problem in Asia has been caused by farms developing to service the rapidly growing urban demands for poultry without concurrent enhancement of farm biosecurity (i.e. a backyard flock grows bigger). This is not being driven by the big multinational companies but by smallholders who see the economic benefit of servicing these markets. These farmers grow more birds under fairly primitive conditions and do not implement appropriate disease control measures. The solution to this problem is to enhance the biosecurity of these farms.

True, but it's not these farms that ship their products world-wide.
This article also suggests that the virus needs to circulate in poultry to become pathogenic. This is not the case with the H5N1 viruses circulating currently. These are already highly pathogenic from the moment they enter a flock and have been since 1996.

That's what I understood the article to be saying.

As I have stated many times this is predominatly a disease of poultry but it is incorrect to blame its emergence on intensive farming.

Agreed it's predominantly a poultry disease - so why this misguided focus on migrant birds? Where's the FAO reports on the international poultry trade?

Cheers
Richard<br><br>Post edited by: martin, at: 2006/03/02 11:47

Here's case - from Japan - where H5N2 (less dangerous than H5N1) was evidently diagnosed in large farms, but covered up.
Have been cases where cover-up for H5N1 in farms/reports on infections only very slow to emerge.

MITO, Ibaraki Pref. (Kyodo) Police arrested four people Monday related to a poultry farm operator in Ibaraki Prefecture in connection with a suspected coverup of an avian flu outbreak last year.

Police suspect Ikuo Eguchi, 58, Yoshio Maeda, 53, Takanori Nakamura, 36, all veterinarians at IKN Egg Farms Co., and IKN employee Tomohiro Nakane, 32, violated the Domestic Animal Infectious Diseases Control Law, which requires reporting any suspected contagious diseases in poultry.

They also suspect an antibody test conducted at the National Institute of Animal Health in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, by a veterinarian at the request of the IKN vets showed positive, the sources said.

The Tsukuba veterinarian is an acquaintance of the IKN vets.

The four IKN employees allegedly failed to report a case of suspected avian flu infection to the Ibaraki government late last August.

Polices searched IKN Egg Farms and the Tsukuba research institute in December and questioned the vets.

The vets at IKN Egg Farm are also suspected of obstructing an avian flu test at three farms conducted by Ibaraki Prefecture last August by submitting samples taken from other poultry farms, the sources said.

The prefecture has alleged that IKN Egg Farms committed similar misdeeds at two other poultry farms it operates in Ibaraki, prefectural officials said.

Avian flu infections have been found at 40 farms in Ibaraki Prefecture since June, and about 5.8 million chickens have had to be killed.
Veterinarians held over Ibaraki bird flu coverup<br><br>Post edited by: martin, at: 2006/03/01 13:10

Dear Martin/Devlin/Richard,

Cases of human infection that occurred in villages in China, Thailand, Turkey and Viet Nam before poultry cases were reported, but detected retrospectively, provide the visible evidence of non-reporting in the smallholder/backyard sector. Humans should not be the sentinels for infection in poultry but, repeatedly, this has been the case.

In Viet Nam where I am working at present (incidentally, working on ways to protect the livelihood of the millions of households involved in rearing scavenging poultry) the Department of Livestock Production estimates that about 20% of the total chicken population(close to 40 million poultry) is in &quot;semi-intensive&quot; commercial flocks containing between 100 and 300 poultry. These are not part of integrated operations and are the flocks most at risk from H5N1 avian influenza because of their system of production and method of marketing. Ways need to be found to protect these poultry and some basic biosecurity (and vaccination) help to do so.

These are the farms I was referring to in my posting and not the flocks owned by contractors working for integrated companies, which are usually larger and practice reasonable biosecurity.

Anyone reading the Grain article would be led to your conclusion that &quot;The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is essentially a problem of industrial poultry practices. Its epicentre is the factory farms of China and Southeast Asia&quot;. However this statement is not consistent with the way H5N1 viruses emerged in Asia (through geese and live bird markets), with the lack of solid data on the exact mode of spread across Eurasia, with the key role of free ranging domestic ducks in the maintenance and spread of H5N1 viruses since about year 2000, and the occurrence of cases since late 2004 in Asia which predominantly (but not exclusively) involved smallholder flocks (e.g. cases in Siberia in 2005, cases in Thailand in the second half of 2004 - see page 8 of http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/subjects/documents/ai/AVIbull029a.pdf).
Have large poultry farms contributed to the spread of H5N1? Absolutely and they have not helped their cause by covering up some outbreaks, but they are not alone in doing so.

Finally, for your information, I had read the whole report on the day the news article was released. Unfounded comments to suggest otherwise are not particularly helpful in a forum such as this.

Regards,

Les Sims

Dear Martin/Devlin/Richard,

Cases of human infection that occurred in villages in China, Thailand, Turkey and Viet Nam before poultry cases were reported, but detected retrospectively, provide the visible evidence of non-reporting in the smallholder/backyard sector. Humans should not be the sentinels for infection in poultry but, repeatedly, this has been the case.

In the Turkish case there was a report in a US newspaper (NYTimes?) of trucks arriving in the town where the children died, carrying old broilers from a nearby factory that were sold off cheap. Not proof of anything, but a plausible way people could get infected ahead of backyard flocks.

In Viet Nam where I am working at present (incidentally, working on ways to protect the livelihood of the millions of households involved in rearing scavenging poultry) the Department of Livestock Production estimates that about 20% of the total chicken population(close to 40 million poultry) is in semi-intensive commercial flocks containing between 100 and 300 poultry. These are not part of integrated operations and are the flocks most at risk from H5N1 avian influenza because of their system of production and method of marketing. Ways need to be found to protect these poultry and some basic biosecurity (and vaccination) help to do so.
These are the farms I was referring to in my posting and not the flocks owned by contractors working for integrated companies, which are usually larger and practice reasonable biosecurity.

I'm sure Devlin can help here: my understanding was [some at least] contract farms use chicks supplied by the big factory farms?

Anyone reading the Grain article would be led to your conclusion that The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is essentially a problem of industrial poultry practices. Its epicentre is the factory farms of China and Southeast Asia . However this statement is not consistent with the way H5N1 viruses emerged in Asia (through geese and live bird markets),

See below re Lhasa. Is that market a &quot;wet&quot; one?

with the lack of solid data on the exact mode of spread across Eurasia,

But there's a perfectly rational and obvious explanation: the pattern of spread goes from east to west following road and railway lines. Avian flus have been moved along railway lines before: 1925 in the USA for example. Dirty carrying crates were apparently the vector then. The spread across Eurasia doesn't follow any bird migration pathway, nor is there any species that begins its migration in the east in spring and ends up in the west in autumn. Migration is a forward-backward movement: if the disease went north in spring, it would come back south in autumn.

with the key role of free ranging domestic ducks in the maintenance and spread of H5N1 viruses since about year 2000,

But it's very strange the disease hasn't crossed from domestic free-range ducks to wild, migrant ducks (e.g. complete absence of the virus in healthy wild birds for the last decade at Mai Po). Shouldn't wild bird populations be awash with the disease in Asia by now?

and the occurrence of cases since late 2004 in Asia which predominantly (but not exclusively) involved smallholder flocks (e.g. cases in Siberia in 2005, cases in Thailand in the second half of 2004 - see page 8 of http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/subjects/documents/ai/AVIbull029a.pdf).

Again, there's a perfectly rational explanation for this. One of the FAO bulletins reported that an outbreak in Lhasa, Tibet, in 2004 was traced back to Lanzhou, China, 1,500 km away. The outbreak was at the main poultry market in Lhasa. Suppose the birds had been sold to smallholders a day or two earlier at the market? Result: sudden, near simultaneous outbreaks in backyard farms across Tibet - precisely the pattern reported in e.g. the Ukraine. And where was the finger of blame pointed? Wild birds of course. And where is Lanzhou? A &quot;hub&quot; on the silk road, on a major railway line that runs from China to Eastern Europe.

Have large poultry farms contributed to the spread of H5N1? Absolutely and they have not helped their cause by covering up some outbreaks, but they are not alone in doing so.

I'm sure, therefore, you can understand our frustration when the popular belief is that wild birds are the sole spreaders of the virus. Sure they could be playing a part, but a very minor one at most.

Finally, for your information, I had read the whole report on the day the news article was released. Unfounded comments to suggest otherwise are not particularly helpful in a forum such as this.

Agreed.

Regards
Richard<br><br>Post edited by: martin, at: 2006/03/02 11:58

from Devlin Kuyek of Grain:

Dear Martin,

My apologies for jumping to the conclusion that Dr. Sims had not read the report. Perhaps I've been influenced by all the speculation that surrounds this issue (or maybe it was his reference to Laurie Garrett).

I would like to briefly respond to a couple points in his latest posting, while encouraging others on your forum with more knowledge than I to reply to those points that I have left out.

It is admirable that Dr Sims is devoting his attention to smallholder farmers. We too believe that they are most at risk from continued outbreaks of bird flu, not only from the virus but also from control measures that are impractical for them to implement and &quot;restructuring&quot; plans that will wipe them out of the picture. We also believe, from our experience in working closely with farmers around the world, that farmers have a tremendous wealth of knowledge about how to manage disease on their farms, whether for crops or animals, that is all too often dismissed as &quot;primitive&quot; by outside experts.

As Dr Sims alluded to in his comments, biosafety requires different approaches for small, mixed farms and factory farms. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but conventional approaches to control Newcastle Disease, for instance, are entirely different for small holders and big operations. With small farms, Newcastle is treated as a low-level disease that regularly occurs but that causes only minor mortality. But in a factory farm, it can get in through