Many people have criticized Indonesia’s sluggishness to ban backyard poultry as Indonesian officials threatened to do in October of 2006.
But what if Indonesian officials really know more than we do about backyard poultry and the real causes of bird flu? Could lack of public education really be a driving force in preventing bird flu infection in humans? And could it be that the big multinational poultry industry is the root cause for the escalation of bird flu in poultry in the world, particularly in Asia? Could it be that besides being hugely unpopular and difficult to enforce banning backyard birds would be ineffective in the fight against bird flu?
In 2006, many large governmental and international organizations came to the conclusion that backyard poultry is one of the biggest obstacles in quashing bird flu outbreaks in the world. These organizations support eliminating backyard flocks in lieu of large commercial operations that have rigourous avian biosecurity measures in place and are supposedly easier to monitor and where culling would be easier in the event of an outbreak of an avian flu virus.
But I wonder if animal health and farm hygiene really is better in a large commercial poultry operation. And I doubt that a good long term strategy to fight bird flu consists of prohibiting backyard poultry, dumbifying the people and leaving the raising of poultry in the hands of a few experts raising a few breeds of birds.
We need a lot more properly washed hands, the prevention of risky bird flu behaviors in people where bird flu is endemic, and stronger policies separating the big poultry industry from the millions of people managing less than 20 chickens. In a position paper of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) dated September, 2004 and still relevant, the following statement admits that large commercial poultry producers are likely to have a greater role in bird flu infection:
“The probability of infection is higher in production sectors 3 and 4 (commercial poultry producers with little biosecurity measures and backyard poultry producers, both who may sell poultry a live bird markets) than in sectors 1 and 2 (medium and large commercial poultry producers raising chickens indoors with high biosecurity measures.) However, if the virus does enter farms in sectors 1 and 2, infection may have a greater impact due to the larger concentration of susceptible poultry in these farms.”
Interestingly enough, FAO is stuck between supporting the small poultry producer and going along with organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) who is largely against backyard poultry farming.
GRAIN, a non-governmental organization who supports small agricultural producers around the world, has written a well-documented article about the controversy swirling around the blame game among poultry farmers and bird flu. The conclusion points to large factory poultry farms as the source and multiplier of bird flu and backyard birds and wild birds being innocent bystanders.
The solution? Aside from public education campaigns regarding the prevention of avian flu, separate factory farms and poultry by-products from factory farms such as eggs, chicks, chicken feed with chicken parts and chicken manure, from backyard flocks and wild bird populations. Maybe you thought that feeding animal by-products back to other animals was banned around the world. Think again. Also stop the transboundary commerce of eggs, chicks, chicken feed and chicken manure. Check out how bird flu is transmitted in birds to see how important it is to prevent the spread of contaminated chicken parts, including manure and feathers.
Can Ordinary Farmers Properly Monitor Flocks for Bird Flu?
Some people feel that farmers are not bright enough to recognize when birds are sick and since monitoring millions of backyard (and front yard) chickens would be impossible for university educated officials, the conclusion is that all poultry should be confined to large high tech factory poultry farms.
I grew up on a small farm and I was in charge of egg collecting. Our chickens roamed freely on the farm and I had to hunt for the nests. I knew each chicken so well I knew which eggs came from which chickens and I would have certainly recognized a chicken behaving strangely. Chickens had marked personalities and many of my chickens had names. I was only eight years-old then, but I’m sure I would have known if one of my chickens were sick.
My thoughts are echoed in the quote of a Vietnamese farmer, Ms. Thanh, quoted in GRAIN’s report citing the Asian Times, “Free-range chickens are healthier because they get to run around. I pay attention to them and know when they get sick. In the factory, no one pays attention to them and it’s hard to tell when one gets sick.”
Bird flu is very easy to recognize in poultry unless the birds don't show symptoms which happens in some ducks. Birds stumble, their combs turn blue, they cough, they don't move, they don't lay eggs and if they have the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu virus, they usually die within 24 hours. Any farmer would recognize bird flu in a bird, even a child would know the chicken was sick. The trick is getting them to confess their chickens are sick. Supposedly in a commercial farm, controls should be easier to enforce.
GRAIN writes, however, that there have been several large poultry operations around the world that have processed sick birds so as not to lose money. So it makes you wonder if commercial operations really are easier to control.
Because if they are not, a dump of several thousand sick chicken carcasses made into chicken food, or infected eggs shipped off to another country would certainly make a larger global impact than a few sick chickens in someone’s backyard.
Wild Birds and Backyard Birds Not Likely to be Primary Transmitters of Avian Flu
(See Sources.)