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January 12, 2006: It seems you can’t
turn on TV, radio or computer right now without hearing about
“Bird Flu.” Heightened public safety concerns
are forcing commercial producers with outdoor flocks to consider
new precautions if the threat to US birds seems imminent.
If the disease actually reaches a US flock, options could
be more drastic.
The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which
surfaced in Thailand and Vietnam in the mid-1990s, has grabbed
media attention because of its ability to infect humans who
have come in close contact. Among those who have been hospitalized
with the disease, about half of the patients have died. What
has public health professionals most worried is the remote
potential of the virus to mutate into a form that can be passed
from person to person.
Unfortunately, public hysteria and government over-reaction
to the potential threat may do more damage to the free-range
poultry industry than the disease itself. Small-scale poultry
producers who pride themselves on raising healthy birds in
the open air may be forced to choose between staying in business
and confining their flocks during heightened risk periods.
Kip Glass, a pastured poultry producer from Bois D’Arc,
Missouri, is concerned about the government response to a
possible outbreak. “Like most other producers, I'm worried
that this will be an excuse for the USDA to force confinement
on small producers,” Glass said. “I'm in a large
poultry area here….This is the largest area for confinement
poultry in the country. I'm just worried they're going to
use it for an excuse to get rid of the little guys.”
Pastured poultry production is a system whereby birds are
housed in moveable coops, pens or shelters and are allowed
access to green grass, sunlight and fresh air. According to
the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association (APPPA)
website, birds raised in a pastured poultry setting “receive
up to 20 percent of their feed intake from pasture forage.
The birds are moved regularly to fresh pasture, which allows
the birds to be raised in a cleaner, healthier environment.
Pastured poultry is raised the old-fashioned way; on fresh
green pasture and wholesome grain.”
Believing in better birds
In confinement systems, thousands of chickens or turkeys
per building are kept indoors in crowded conditions, and usually
fed antibiotics as a routine part of their diet. Many pastured
poultry producers and their customers believe that birds raised
outdoors have stronger immune systems and live with less stress
than birds raised in confinement and are, therefore, more
resistant to diseases.
“There are no documented cases of avian influenza
in pastured, free-range, organic birds,” said Jeff Mattocks,
organic livestock feed specialist and pastured poultry specialist
with Fertrell Inc., a Pennsylvania company that produces organic
feed products and soil amendments. “If the immune system
is functioning at 100 percent, birds should be able to fight
off avian influenza.”
An officer with APPPA, Mattocks reasoned, “I don't
have a great concern for the pastured poultry folks getting
infected. Sunshine and green grass go a long way to build
the immune system and protect the birds.”
Unfortunately, while this position may sound like common
sense, there is little or no scientific evidence to support
it. “No one has studied the difference in immune system
responses in free-range and confined birds,” said Dr.
Eric Gingerich, DVM, Staff Veterinarian and Adjunct Assistant
Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary
Medicine. “A highly pathogenic form of disease like
the Asian form will probably affect everyone. Biosecurity
is about the only tool we have at this point.”
Official policy: stopping disease
Biosecurity is the practice of ensuring that disease organisms
are not spread from one animal population to another. The
practice focuses more on preventing the spread of disease
than on promoting the organic approach of optimal health of
individual birds or of the flock as a whole.
According to Madelaine Fletcher, Public Affairs Specialist
with the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service, biosecurity is the basket where
the government has put all of its eggs. “One of the
things we've been doing for the past year and a half is outreach
and education to people who raise backyard poultry. We've
developed quite a few materials on biosecurity.”
A complete description of APHIS’s biosecurity recommendations
is available at www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/birdbiosecurity.
While these recommendations might be useful to recreational
poultry enthusiasts, they miss the mark for commercial pastured
poultry producers. The latter tend to be hands-on business
people who pay close attention to the health, nutrition and
living conditions of their flocks and fiercely hold one belief
in common: confinement is bad for birds.
But if the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza is detected
in this country, that is precisely what the USDA will expect
them to do. There is no word yet as to how much time producers
would be given to get their flocks under cover once the order
comes.
Counsel from UK farm group
Organic farmers in the United Kingdom have been considering
their options for some time, in light of their experience
with Mad Cow Disease and the government response to it. The
Soil Association (SA), the largest organic certification organization
in the UK, in a briefing paper for its organic poultry producers
recommends they take steps appropriate to the threat level:
• The farms considered most at risk for an avian
flu outbreak are those in the flight path of migratory birds
coming from Asia and other infected areas.
• If an outbreak occurs in Europe, farmers may be
forced to move birds into confinement. The SA recommends
coops, straw bale structures or polytunnels as temporary
bird housing with a stocking density of six birds per square
meter (a meter is a little less that a yard) for laying
hens. For birds that are used to going outdoors, this may
seem too confining and they may become bored and develop
bad habits such as feather pecking. To soften the social
impact of this suddenly forced closeness, the Soils Association
recommends building runs off of the coop. The runs should
have a solid roof; small-diameter, wire mesh walls and plenty
of bedding. If confinement is required during hot weather,
ventilation will have to be considered.
• Recommendations to keep birds active within pens
include hanging vegetables or bright objects at pecking
height, spreading grain or grit in straw for the birds to
scratch through, straw bales or other objects for the birds
to perch on and lightweight plastic balls or other toys
to attract the birds’ attention.
• If they move birds into temporary confinement,
producers should consult their animal nutrition specialist.
Confined birds have different nutritional needs than free-ranging
birds.
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Instead of mandatory culling of all the poultry flocks in
an area where infection is found, the SA recommends selective
culling followed by “ring vaccination.” This would
mean that an infected flock would be killed, but healthy flocks
around it would be vaccinated to form a ring around the known
outbreak and, hopefully, contain it. The European Union has
yet to make a decision on this issue.
Dr. Gingerich considers a vaccination program a possibility
for the US. “Vaccination usually reduces the shed rate
of the virus significantly,” he said. “It was
used successfully in an outbreak of a low pathogenic form
of avian flu a few years ago in Connecticut. If we attack
the virus agressively when we find the first flock, a minimal
number of flocks have to be destroyed. The virus only spread
to three flocks in Connecticut.”
No vaccine yet for H5N1
But, Dr. Gingerich points out, the problem in this situation
is that there is, as yet, no vaccine to combat this virus.
There are vaccines to protect against other forms of avian
flu, but none have been developed to provide immunity against
the H5N1 Asian form of avian influenza. A vaccination program
was undertaken in China in an effort to contain the virus,
but it had limited success. “The Chinese program is
questionable,” Dr. Gingerich said. “It looks as
if the vaccinators may actually be spreading the virus through
poor hygiene practices.”
Both Mattocks and Gingerich stress the importance of good
management practices to promote poultry health. “Environmental
conditions are very important and air quality is the most
important of all,” Mattocks said. “Also keep up
water quality and feed quality.”
Dr. Gingerich considers pond water a particular source of
concern. “The biggest danger is wild waterfowl. They
carry avian influenza viruses without showing any symptoms.
Ponds on farms are a high-risk situation.” Poultry should
not be permitted to drink from a water source that may be
visited by wild fowl.
Many small-scale poultry farmers have relationships with
the people who buy their birds or eggs. One of the most important
things producers can do to protect their businesses from the
avian flu threat is to educate their customers, and the public,
about the disease and how they raise their birds.
For starters, poultry production in this country contrasts
markedly with that in Indo-China, according to pastured poultry
producer David Smith of Sparks, Maryland. “In southeast
Asia, chickens are kept in mud lots where they walk in excrement
all the time. People walk in this excrement in their bare
feet and that is how they get the virus,” Smith said.
“That isn’t how we raise chickens in this country.”
(Initial reports from Turkey this week indicate that the three
deaths there were also due to close contact. – Ed.)
Also, producers can point out to their customers that avian
flu can not be transmitted by eating poultry products. Even
if a bird carried the flu virus, thorough cooking would kill
the virus.
Ultimately, most pastured poultry producers recognize that
they may have to make hopefully short-lived changes on their
farms if the dangerous form of Asian flu reaches the US. Some,
like Smith, plan to fence in their day-range shelters if they
have to. Others, like Ritch and Glass, would probably go out
of the poultry business, at least until the epidemic is over.
“We as a nation do rely on our government to put things
in place to keep plagues from moving through the country,”
Ritch said. “We want that. If they want us to deflock,
I'll deflock.” 
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