Avian Flu fears fail to ruffle farmers’ feathers
Steps already taken to protect province’s agriculture industry

By Dee Hobsbawn-Smith
  Calgary Herald Real Life2006 
 


 
 

“The wild geese fly the same pathways they have followed for centuries.”

In 1985, Lorna Crozier wrote her poem, Wild Geese. Twenty-one years later, Canadians are looking overhead at the wild birds for different reasons.

There has always been avian flu in wild birds Let it be said up front that there is no bird flu in Alberta’s cultivated flocks. Nor is any expected, says Dr. Gerald Hauer, Alberta Agriculture’s assistant chief veterinarian.

But Ron Hamilton of Sunworks Farm remains wary. He raises free-range organic chickens and turkeys near Armena and is perched on the front lines of risk if wild birds flying to sunnier skies contaminate his wandering birds’ playground.

According to Hauer, Hamilton does not have to worry. The vet led a team that recently examined the risks wild birds pose to free-range birds, then made several recommendations to the provincial government.

At the top of the short list was the recommendation to not ban outdoor raising of birds. Hauer says there is no evidence eliminating free ranging would effectively stop transmission of the virus from wild to domestic birds. His team decided instead the prudent path should include concentrating on education and awareness, biosecurity and early detection.

Hamilton and his wife Sheila have taken several steps toward risk management in case the government limits or bans free range bird farming.

“Our birds have field barns — 15 buildings over 20 acres of land,” Hamilton explains. “We plan to completely enclose then, and the ranges will be completely covered with shade cloth, similar to what the ginseng farmers use in the southern B.C. valleys.

“Then we will add vertical netting fine enough to keep birds out.”

The end result will actually provide more shade for the birds in the high days of summer, he says, and encourage them to venture out of their field barns to graze.

Sunworks’ wandering birds have water brought to them from the farm’s dugouts. Hamilton says the water is cleaned, chlorinated and filtered before the birds receive it, so fecal contamination from wild birds is unlikely
     
Both steps conform with what Hauer describes as the commonsense thing to do, namely keeping domestic fowl away from water sources frequented by wild birds, and penning them to protect them from contact with their wild cousins.

That should help allay consumer concerns because we like our white and dark meat.

According to the Alberta Poultry Producers, every year Albertans consume an average of about 66 pounds (30 kilograms) of chicken per capita. Those chickens are raised on any of nearly 300 family farms in Alberta, for a jaw-dropping total of about 50 million birds each year.

The Hamiltons’ farm produces about 26,000 certified-organic birds in one outdoor season, which lasts from May to September. If avian flu were to arrive in any of those flocks, it represents a very serious economic threat.

The risk to human health is minimal, says Hauer: the pathogen of avian flu is destroyed by thorough cooking, so food safety is not an issue if meat is handled and cooked properly.

Other industry safeguards have been put in place, too: all chicken farms are required to comply with a biohazard program that includes not letting anyone into the bird barns; birds are inspected at the slaughter facility; and Alberta Agriculture has implemented an education awareness refresher program for all meat inspectors.

But as Hamilton points out, if avian flu arrives in Alberta, consumers will question the safety of their food, just as they did with the onset of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. The consumption of chicken would decline, and bird farmers would be left with yards full of fowl.

For conscientious producers such as the Hamiltons, the safety net lies in having an on-farm program that sees the farmers “say what you do and do what you say.”

Common-sense measures like those put forward by Hauer’s team march alongside Hamilton’s reality: that astute producers walk through their flocks several times a day. Vigilance makes it easy to promptly act on anything out of the ordinary and adds another layer of checks to the process. For now, the risks to free-range flocks — from government and wild birds alike — seem as faint as the sound of Crozier’s wild geese honking overhead.