Ontario feather industry dodges AI bullet
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
by SUSAN MANN
The Ontario chicken industry’s on-farm disease prevention program and emergency planning efforts helped it dodge a bullet when highly pathogenic avian influenza showed up on three Oxford County-area poultry farms last year.
But an industry representative advises farmers to remain vigilant because such viruses remain in the environment and are carried by migrating wild birds or small rodents.
Testing of live wild birds last year showed “a perilously high level of the avian influenza virus nearing 30 per cent,” said Gwen Zellen, Chicken Farmers of Ontario vice president of quality, technical affairs and sustainability.
People can also pick up the virus and carry it into barns, she noted.
The virus outbreak, confirmed in Ontario in April 2015, was contained on the three farms where it was identified. Once quarantines were lifted three months later the number of birds killed by the virus or euthanized stood at about 80,000, according to a chart on the CFIA website.
Yet Ontario clearly sidestepped the widespread devastation of poultry flocks that happened in British Columbia and the United States when the same virus struck there, participants at the Chicken Farmers of Ontario annual meeting were told last week.
photo: Tom Baker
In British Columbia the outbreak killed 250,000 birds, said Tom Baker, incident commander of the Feather Board Command Centre, the Ontario industry’s disease management organization.
In the United States, where the outbreak raged until June 2015, the death toll was in the millions. In July, The Guardian quoted U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates of more than 48 million birds lost.
“Ontario’s success in combating avian influenza was due to the close collaboration of industry and government,” Baker said.
As soon avian influenza was confirmed in Ontario, the feather board command centre activated its emergency operations and was joined by staff from the four member poultry boards (Chicken Farmers of Ontario, Turkey Farmers of Ontario, Egg Farmers of Ontario and the Ontario Broiler Hatching Egg and Chick Commission).
The command centre worked closely with Canadian Food Inspection Agency officials to respond to the situation, Baker said.
The agency imposed quarantines and set up two control zones.
Meanwhile, the centre worked rapidly to create maps and coordinate upcoming shipments of birds and placements of chicks to help maintain business continuity for farmers.
Zellen attributed the extensive spread of avian influenza in the United States to biosecurity breaches and inadequate preparedness.
She said Ontario industry representatives know now why the disease was so devastating there, but at the time they were stumped. “As we watched the disease spread (throughout the American Midwest) we had growing concerns.
The lessons learned during the experience with avian influenza in Ontario “are informing our current improvements to the feather board command centre,” Zellen said.
Risk management, with a focus on prevention and preparedness, provides the greatest return on investment, she explained. “As you move along to response and recovery, the costs certainly escalate.”
For prevention “we know that farmer and industry biosecurity efforts are key to preventing the introduction and spread of disease. CFO’s (Chicken Farmers of Ontario’s) on-farm food safety assurance program has been enhanced during the past few years so biosecurity efforts are improved,” she said.
The feather board command centre is currently reviewing all four boards’ biosecurity standards with the goal of harmonizing them to the highest standard. BF