6 June 2024
A shortage of government veterinarians is one of the obstacles to being able to successfully apply the strict protocol for vaccinating chickens against highly contagious bird flu.
The South African Poultry Association (SAPA) says there are too few state veterinarians to be able to comply with the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development’s protocol.
According to the protocol, state veterinarians must be involved, among other things, in the assessment of poultry farms’ applications to be able to vaccinate. No applications had been approved as of 3 June.
Izaak Breitenbach of the SAPA said in a recent vaccination webinar presented by the FairPlay anti-dumping movement that the protocol also requires state veterinarians to take the required samples on farms where chickens have been vaccinated. Given the shortage of government vets, there is a proposal for private vets to do this but that would be impractical, he said.
“There are only one or two private veterinarians per (poultry) enterprise. The vet will have to go from farm to farm in his private capacity (to take the samples for the state), which is a huge risk for biosecurity.”
So far, the industry and the department have not been able to agree that staff on farms, who take other samples, should also take the samples for bird flu observation.
Dr Adri Grobler, deputy director for regulatory animal health services of the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, confirmed during the webinar that there are too few government veterinarians. She and two of her colleagues took part in the conversation but there was no representative from the national department. The industry and the national department have been meeting weekly since the protocol was published in November.
Breitenbach said he had a lot of respect for Dr Mpho Maja, director of animal health at the national department, and she had already conceded to the industry on certain aspects. However, if the protocol is impossible and too expensive for producers to comply with, he is concerned that it will not motivate producers to follow the correct procedures when they have outbreaks.
Waivers remain an issue
Dr Alan Kalake, director of veterinary epidemiology in Gauteng, said the distinctive South African H7N6 strain of bird flu caused 80 outbreaks in Gauteng last year. Sixty-one were “closed” earlier this month. The remaining 19 involve farms that applied for a waiver after egg producers realised last year that the bird flu strain in question was not as deadly as previous strains and that some of the laying hens survived.
According to Kalake, nine of the 19 have since decided to dispose of their chickens but 10 are still waiting for approval for a waiver.
Grobler said tests on the 10 farms show that the chickens are no longer excreting the disease. However, the quarantine on the farms will only be fully lifted when the chickens have been culled. For producers, however, the lack of state compensation for chickens that have been culled remains a big issue, Breitenbach said.
The producers who applied for a waiver were “trying to protect themselves in circumstances in which they are not compensated”, he said. According to him, last year’s H5N1 and H7N6 outbreaks resulted in direct losses of more than R9,5 billion for poultry producers.
In light of the fact that tests prove chickens on the farms in question are no longer excreting the virus, Breitenbach asked that these farms’ exemption applications be completed and the problem thus eliminated.
New thinking needed
Dr Ziyanda Majokweni-Qwalela, deputy director for epidemiology of the Gauteng department, said that in the absence of money to compensate farmers, innovative ways must be found to help farmers cope. “We should probably look at some form of risk insurance,” she said, adding that a specific fund from which farmers can be compensated would give reassurance to the industry.
FairPlay said it would investigate the creation of such an emergency fund. Founder Francois Baird suggested that the anti-dumping tariffs levied on certain imported chicken meat could be used for this.
