The first 24 hours after the news you are hardly approachable, you know, turkey farmer in Ysselsteyn in North Limburg. “You are alive, it is emotional.” He understands better than anyone that the farmer just down the road, who had to have his 99,000 laying hens culled due to bird flu on Christmas Day, only speaks to the media very briefly at the moment.
“I really don’t have time and besides, no one is allowed on the property,” is all that Henk Nieuwenhuis, manager of the affected Veulen Pluimvee BV, wants to say by telephone. The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) immediately established a 10-kilometer zone around his company, located in Veulen (municipality of Venray). set within which no birds or eggs may be transported.
The suffering is still fresh for 55-year-old Jenniskens, but he can now talk about it. Bird flu was reported at one of his two farms last weekend established. The next day, all 23,000 turkeys there were killed.
“The progression of the disease is very rapid,” he says on the phone. “We saw that some animals were lethargic and could no longer get up. At first we thought it was fatty liver disease, but it spread very quickly through the stable. They became critically ill.” He called the NVWA, which did a rapid test and sent samples to a lab. “We received the results at half past one in the morning, and at half past seven in the morning the clearers were on our doorstep.”
We saw that some animals were lethargic and could no longer get up. It spread very quickly through the stable, they became seriously ill
The turkeys in two of his four stables were still very healthy, says Jenniskens, but they also had to be killed. Gassed, because that’s how it goes. “A blanket of CO2 is injected into the stable. This dissipates the oxygen and so they slowly fall asleep.”
It’s terrible, says the poultry farmer. “First and foremost for the animals. You can’t be a farmer if you don’t have a passion for animals.”
An involved person at Veulen Pluimvee, who wants to remain anonymous “because NRC has a bad name in the agricultural sector” – his name is known to the editors – tells a similar story. “Normally it is noisy in the stable. Now we saw in one corner that it was quiet. They were no longer honking. Then you know that things are wrong.”
Bird flu has been spreading worldwide for years, both among wild birds and in the poultry sector. At the end of November the European Food Safety Authority Within the European Union, 2,500 infections in wild birds and 440 cases in human birds have already been detected this season. For wild birds this was a record for that moment in the year.
Because many turkey farms in Germany have recently been cleared, the supply of turkey meat in the Netherlands this Christmas is scarce. reported the Dutch Poultry Farmers’ Union on Wednesday. Most turkey meat eaten in the Netherlands comes from there. Bird flu is also causing a supply problem in the United States, where turkey is part of Christmas for many people, the union said.
Bird flu can be transmitted to mammals and also to humans, but the latter rarely occurs. There is a fear that the virus will mutate in such a way that a variant will arise that people can transmit to each other. At the beginning of this month it was announced that bird flu had been detected in a domestic cat for the first time in the Netherlands.
Twan Jenniskens now speaks with some routine about bird flu. Four years ago, to the day, his company also had to be cleared, he says. “It’s very bizarre that this happened to us twice at exactly the same time. Yet I really think there is little I can do about it.”
Goose poop
The virus is found in the feces of infected birds and can spread through infected dust particles in the air. Jenniskens stables have free range, but even if this is not available, contaminated air can enter the stable through the ventilation.
Perhaps it is not so strange that the two infections at his company were detected on the same date, says Jenniskens. “In both cases, sugar beets had recently been harvested in the immediate area. Four years ago it was on our own farm, this year at a farmer in the area. I saw a lot of geese coming towards it. They love the remains.” He suspects that the infection came through goose droppings.
It is only a personal theory, says the farmer, and of course the connection cannot be clearly demonstrated. “But maybe it will help if farmers use the remains from now on. He does not rule out that an alternative crop would also attract geese.
He also ensures “hygiene, hygiene, hygiene” at his two farms. To avoid exchanges, he runs one company and his son the other. And we have to wait until a vaccine comes on the market. A pilot project with a vaccine on one poultry farm will take until early 2027. “It will not eliminate the chance of an outbreak, but it will reduce it.”
The costs of the vaccination will have to be included in the consumer price, says Jenniskens. The meat from his company goes to Jumbo, Lidl and Superunie supermarkets (including Plus, Dirk, Vomar).
Startup
The costs for the clearance will be reimbursed, but the vacancy is an item that a company must bear itself. The farmer doesn’t think about stopping. “When De Peel was developed, my grandfather started a mixed company here. My son, who joined the company last year, is the fourth generation. The great thing is that he immediately tries to think of how we can start up again.”
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The NVWA has a protocol for this. After the cull, no one is allowed in the stable for two weeks, followed by a period of disinfection, waiting and checks. “After about two months you can start again. We will certainly do that, because the demand for poultry meat is still increasing. We will not let ourselves be defeated.”
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