The cabinet must act quickly on vaccinating poultry to combat bird flu. Animal protection and professors in the field of agriculture and animal diseases are making this appeal now that the contagious virus has led to a long confinement obligation for the second year.
Dutch free-range chickens have been indoors for four and a half months and therefore have less space. About 1.7 million animals on more than thirty infected farms have been killed. This week, 170,000 broilers were culled in Son (North Brabant) and 64,500 turkeys in Hedel (Gelderland). Since mid-February, sixteen weeks after the start of the compulsory penning period, free-range eggs have been sold as free-range eggs.
The current bird flu outbreak is the largest since 2003 and is persistent because wild birds spread highly pathogenic viruses, while the more pathogenic variants used to be limited to poultry farming. The existing approach – keeping animals inside until the virus dies out – is therefore no longer tenable, according to the experts.
Vaccinating poultry not only helps to prevent the spread of bird flu, but also to reduce the risk to public health, the letter from the Animal Protection Agency says. Although the chance is small and the course of the disease is usually mild, people can also develop flu-like symptoms if they come into contact with infected animals. According to the RIVM, this has not yet happened in the Netherlands.
Also read: Bird flu is always around. So why are virologists holding their breath now?
‘Marker vaccine’
The poultry sector also sees vaccination as a structural solution and is discussing this with the Ministry of Agriculture. “We have been asking for this since 2013,” says Bart-Jan Oplaat, chairman of the Dutch Union of Poultry Farmers. Now that there is a major outbreak for the second consecutive year, the investigation is getting underway. French and Dutch researchers are working on a so-called ‘marker vaccine’, which shows the difference between animals that have antibodies due to an infection and animals that have been vaccinated.
Agriculture Minister Henk Staghouwer (CU) also wants to vaccinate, but does not expect this coming bird flu season to be successful, he reported to the House of Representatives last week. Also because not all EU countries are in favour.
It is not yet possible to estimate the total extent of the economic damage caused by bird flu to poultry farming. Oplaat does say that each culled company costs the poultry industry approximately one million euros. Affected poultry farmers are reimbursed from an emergency fund – for which companies pay a levy – the current market value of the culled animals.
The entire sector is suffering because poultry farmers and egg traders are being paid less now that free-range eggs have been downgraded to free-range eggs. Dutch supermarkets still pay the same price for eggs from chickens that normally come out. But foreign buyers do not, and half of the free-range eggs go abroad, mainly to Germany. Avined, an umbrella organization for the poultry sector, also fears that sales to Germany will become more difficult, because the Netherlands appears to be unable to supply consistently.
About 20 percent of Dutch eggs, about 10 billion a year, are free-range eggs. Most of it is free-range eggs.
A free-range egg normally yields the farmer 3 to 5 cents more than a free-range egg of about 7 cents. But because free-range eggs are now also free-range, there are now so many free-range eggs on the market that they yield about a cent less each.
Sixteen week rule
Another problem for which the sector warns is that the current confinement rules would inhibit the sustainability of poultry farming. Fewer free-range poultry farmers will switch to more animal-friendly poultry farming with the current risks – they fear that they will not recoup their investments in free range if the bird flu returns every year and eggs are devalued after 16 weeks of compulsory penning, says Oplaat.
On the other hand, according to Avined secretary Ben Dellaert, there are also companies that switch from free-range to organic because the rules for this are different: as long as the chickens go outside for 120 days a year, the eggs are not relegated to free-range eggs, even if the laying hens stay longer. than sixteen weeks.
The rules for organic should also apply to free range. Bellaert: „Then you can start housing before the first outbreak. This prevents infections and culling.” And above all: in this way, free-range eggs retain their value after sixteen weeks of being kept in a cage.
The Animal Protection is not in favor of this, because on balance animals may be indoors longer. Minister Staghouwer has asked the European Commission for a ‘sustainable solution’ for the sixteen-week rule for free-range eggs.
Switching from free range to organic is not an option for many poultry farmers, says union chairman Oplaat: “The market for organic eggs is saturated. There are too many providers who do not lose their eggs.”
Oplaat would also like to see that the compulsory indoor confinement can be ‘peeled off’ regionally, such as in Germany. Although that would not change anything in practice at the moment, because the infections are still spread throughout the Netherlands.
Get out of wetlands
Vaccination is not enough to structurally tackle bird flu, but poultry farming must be overhauled, according to Dierenbescherming and the seven scientists who signed the appeal. Poultry farms must move away from wetlands with many wild birds. And there must be an end to the high concentration of poultry in certain regions. In the Gelderse Vallei and in the vicinity of Venray in particular, so many farms with chickens are clustered together that the risk of animal diseases spreading is extra high, according to research from zoonoses experts. Fewer animals per farm would also reduce the chance of mutations of the virus. And if there is an infection, fewer animals need to be killed.
The poultry sector sees this differently. Oplaat: “Due to the tightened hygiene measures, the virus is hardly moved from one company to another, it enters the barn by wild birds. Before a virus can mutate, the animals in the Netherlands have already been culled. The government organizes its own problem by creating wet nature areas [zoals veenweiden met een hoog waterpeil, red.]: this is how you lay out the red carpet for waterfowl that infect poultry, at small companies just as much as at large ones.”
Zoonoses cannot be separated from intensive livestock farming
A version of this article also appeared in
NRC in the morning of March 4, 2022