Canada's poultry producers are bracing themselves for the possible consequences of an avian influenza (AI) outbreak, but say they feel they are prepared and that the biggest challenge might be convincing the public the sky is not falling on their industry.
The producers worry that the recent appearance of the avian flu, called subtype H5N1 - which has killed dozens of people in Asia and spawned the slaughter of millions of birds in the last couple of years - will cause panic among consumers.
"Concerned? Yes we are. We've already seen poultry consumption in Turkey fall since the announcement" that domestic fowl in that country had been infected by the disease, says Roelf Woldring, manager of the Chicken Farmers of Ontario (CFO).
Les Keczan, who raises 30,000 broiler chickens in Beamsville, Ont., says that while consumption patterns have not yet changed in Canada, public reaction to the flu scare could be the biggest challenge facing the poultry sector.
"The biggest threat we face is public perception; that they stop buying poultry because of what's happening in Europe or Asia," Keczan says.
While H5N1 has spread rapidly among domestic birds in Asia - infecting some humans in close contact with domestic fowl - and has recently spread to Eastern Europe through migrating wild birds, it has yet to mutate into a form that can be transmitted between humans.
Keczan says there will never be a 100-per-cent guarantee that cases won't appear in Canadian poultry, but like others in his industry he remains confident the systems developed over the past couple of years - heavily bolstered following the avian flu outbreak in 2004 in British Columbia - will dramatically reduce the risk that commercial operations across Canada will be affected.
Statistics Canada figures show that revenue from chicken and turkey sales reached $1.8 billion in 2004. Canada also imports and exports poultry and poultry products. According to the Chicken Farmers of Canada, chicken exports in 2004 (when avian flu hit B.C.) totalled 54.6 million kilograms, down from 85.7 million kilograms in 2003.
Since the B.C. outbreak of avian influenza, called subtype H7N3, which led to the slaughter of millions of domestic fowl mostly in the Lower Mainland, the commercial poultry industry has adopted tough biosecurity measures across Canada to help minimize the chance that diseases - especially highly pathogenic ones like the H5 and H7 varieties - will reach the farms.
"Operating procedures since the experience of British Columbia are such that our response at that time was aggressive, but it will be even more aggressive in the future based upon what we learned then," says Dr. Cornelius Kiley, a veterinarian with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).
The lessons learned from B.C.'s experience have resulted in better integration among the various provincial and federal government agencies charged with reacting to outbreaks.
More important, Kiley says, has been the implementation of proper biosecurity measures to prevent viruses and bacteria from arriving on farms, and if they do, stopping them from jumping between farms through the movement of equipment and people, or the spread of dust between barns.
"The industry has done a lot of work when it comes to biosecurity protocols and education," adds Kiley.
"A lot of these measures are common sense: Restrict and log visitors, use disposable coveralls between barns, wash boots between barns and use proper cleaning and disinfecting procedures," he says.
Kiley, who is based in Burnaby, B.C., says the avian flu virus will more likely arrive on Canadian soil by airplane or boat than through migratory birds.
"There are no migratory paths that link Europe with North America, so it shouldn't come via that route," Kiley says. "The movement of equipment and people and products is of greater risk."
The CFO's Woldring's advice to those worried about contracting the H5N1 virus? Don't avoid chickens, "but you might want to avoid people because if you're going to get AI you're going to get it from a person, not a chicken. And that's one of the things nobody seems to understand," he says.
"It could get to the state where that does happen, and that would be an extremely unpleasant virus. But then it won't be wild birds who spread the virus, it will be human beings traveling on planes, crossing geopolitical lines."
Ray Nickel knows all too well what an avian flu outbreak can mean to the bottom line.
In 2004 the virus hit his layer-egg farm in B.C.'s Fraser Valley, which resulted in the cull of 60,000 birds. He says the thought of a repeat makes him shudder.
"I wouldn't wish that experience on anybody," says Nickel, who also runs a turkey operation and is president of the B.C. Poultry Association. "Even from an animal-husbandry side, the destruction of all the animals on your farm is not a pleasant thing to go through."
Besides watching his entire flock destroyed, his farm was quarantined, the disinfection and cleaning processes were costly and took several weeks to complete, and it was several months before the operation began to return to normal.
Nickel says that while the industry was largely able to rebound to where it was before the 2004 outbreak, some operations have struggled because once they lost buyers to producers elsewhere in Canada and the U.S., they couldn't always get them back.
Alberta's poultry industry escaped unscathed from B.C.'s outbreak, and like the rest of the country took the lessons learned to heart.
Lloyd Johnston, manager of Alberta Chicken Producers, says the Alberta industry is as prepared as ever to deal with the avian flu should it arrive in North America.
"We in this province decided to take it seriously and ... 100 per cent of the growers have been audited and certified," Johnston says. "Biosecurity is a big part of that, and that's a big part of breaking the disease cycle."
Alberta producers, unlike many in B.C., are not concentrated in certain areas but dotted throughout the province, which minimizes the chance that a possible outbreak will spread "like wildfire" in the province, he says.
"That's an advantage we have here that B.C. doesn't have, is that the industry is still pretty spread out, so clearly our level of risk is less just because of that."
As in Alberta, Saskatchewan poultry farms are dispersed over a larger area, something that Rose Olsen, general manager of the Saskatchewan Turkey Producers' Marketing Board, says has "generally minimized the risk for us."
Commercial turkey producers in Saskatchewan have executed their own biosecurity measures to stem the occurrence of diseases.
However, they share concerns found elsewhere in Canada about what's happening on unregulated farms that keep small flocks that don't appear on anyone's radar screen and aren't necessarily taking steps to prevent outbreaks of disease.
"It's an issue with us because we don't know where they are," says Olsen. "Our commercial producers have to comply with a lot more regulations than do the non-commercial producers.
"We don't have any problem with backyard flocks, but we want to know where they are."
Saskatchewan's poultry associations are talking with the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Revitalization to disclose the names of non-commercial operations, but to date little progress has been made.
CFIA veterinarian Kiley says there are simple measures that even small-time poultry growers can take to reduce the risk of disease:
* Place netting over poultry and drain ponds on farms to discourage waterfowl from mixing with domestic poultry.
* Watch for rapid mortality in birds and contact a veterinarian quickly if it occurs.
* Restrict farm-gate sales (selling birds or eggs literally at the farm gate) to dissuade people from moving between farms.
"You can box up your eggs and take them to a local marketplace where people congregate to buy and sell goods rather than do it at the farm gate, where you're literally encouraging people to drive between farms."
(John Ludwick can be reached at ludwick@businessedge.ca)
