Ontario's bird flu outbreak leads to new biosecurity realities on poultry farms

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

by SUSAN MANN

This morning a truck pulled into the laneway of Mark Brenneman’s Tavistock-area broiler chicken farm to deliver chicks but before proceeding up the lane to drop them off, the driver got out and disinfected the vehicle.

That’s one of the new realities for poultry farmers now that deadly H5N2 avian influenza has been confirmed on a Woodstock-area turkey farm. The farm was quarantined earlier this week. Another new reality is a lot of farm business is now being transacted over the phone, Brenneman explains, noting service supply company representatives have largely ceased dropping by farms.

“If there’s an emergency or they have to go on to a farm, they’ll take extra precautions,” he says. For example, most feed delivery trucks “are set up with sprayers on the truck” that drivers use to wash vehicles off at the end of farm laneways before proceeding up to the barn area.

Brenneman produces 60,000 broilers for each of the six quota periods in a year on his 230-acre farm. He notes there haven’t been any higher than normal bird deaths on his farm and his chickens haven’t shown any signs of the disease.

The Woodstock-area turkey farm with the virus and nine other surrounding poultry farms are under quarantine by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). Aside from the original turkey farm confirmed to have the H5N2 virus, called the index farm, none of the other premises under quarantine have experienced higher than normal bird deaths or have any evidence of birds being infected by the influenza, CFIA officials say.

Avian influenza doesn’t pose a food safety risk when poultry is properly handled and cooked. Also, it rarely affects humans that don’t have consistent contact with infected birds.

Brenneman, who is located four kilometres north of the quarantine zone set up by CFIA and is 20 kilometres away from the index farm, says he’s not “hitting the panic button at this point but we have certainly stepped up our biosecurity in the barn.”

He has established a “Danish entry” type of system just inside his barn. It’s the same entry system hog producers adopted to help control porcine epidemic diarrhea virus in Ontario.

In his barn, Brenneman says an area just inside the door is cordoned off and that’s where outside footwear is removed on one side of the area, while on another side barn-specific footwear along with coveralls are put on.

Using the Danish entry system “might be overkill but I don’t want be the one that winds up with it (avian influenza) next,” he says.

In his area of Oxford County, there are a lot of poultry farms. “Everybody’s concerned,” he notes, adding area farmers have been kept informed of developments with the disease. “We had a map sent out to us informing us of where the quarantine area is. Everybody in the area, I think, is well aware of what’s been going on.”

Ontario’s chicken production in 2014 was 471 million kilograms with a famgate value of $759 million. There are 1,020 chicken farmers in Ontario.

For turkey, Ontario produces 63 million kilograms annually and that represents about 45 per cent of all turkey produced in Canada. Ontario has 194 turkey farmers and the province is the largest turkey producer in Canada.

Ontario’s egg farmers produce about 200 million dozen eggs annually and the industry’s farm cash receipts are $292 million. There are 440 egg and pullet farmers in the province.

Ingrid DeVisser, chair of the Feather Board Command Centre, the poultry industry’s disease management organization, says the turkeys being ordered euthanized on the index farm is a very small fraction of the province’s turkey production. The command centre’s members are: Chicken Farmers of Ontario, Turkey Farmers of Ontario, Egg Farmers of Ontario, and the Ontario Broiler Hatching Egg and Chick Commission.

At this point avian influenza is not having “an impact (on the poultry industry) that we would be concerned about,” she says. “We’re more concerned about this one particular farm. This takes some emotional toll. We want to help out has much as we can.”

The industry is hopeful the avian influenza has been contained “to this one farm,” she says. “That will mitigate any impact to production.”

Another job officials with the command centre have currently is helping farmers in the quarantine area fill out application forms for permits to move materials on and off their farms, she says. The permits are issued by the CFIA and it controls the permitting system.

Command centre officials are making sure quarantined farmers provide the reports CFIA says it needs and the documents are completed properly. It’s also informing CFIA officials “about what needs to move on and off those farms,” she says.

In the short term, the quarantine isn’t having an impact on the poultry industry, she adds.

This is the first time the Ontario poultry industry has had experience with farms being quarantined, she notes. BF