Third Dutch chicken farm hit by bird flu

[Buster's Uncle]

Third Dutch chicken farm hit by bird flu
Reuters  3 hours ago



A logo is seen at the entrance of a poultry farm, where a highly contagious strain of bird flu was found by Dutch authorities, in Hekendorp November 17, 2014. REUTERS/Marco De Swart



AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch bird flu outbreak has spread to a third farm, the government said on Friday, prompting inspections at dozens of other farms in the Netherlands, a leading exporter of eggs and poultry.

The latest infection was discovered on a chicken farm in the northern town of Kamperveen, more than 100 km (60 miles) from two farms where infections have been reported in the past week, the Economics Ministry said in a letter to parliament.

All 10,000 birds would be destroyed and an exclusion zone of 10 km (6 miles) was imposed. Inspections were to be carried out at 32 nearby farms.

Three out of 12 Dutch provinces have now reported the illness, which is fatal for chickens.

A total of 203,000 chickens were being destroyed and a national lockdown on all transport of chickens, eggs and poultry products was crippling an industry that employs tens of thousands of workers.

Around 2,000 Dutch businesses, with more than 100 million chickens, produce more than 10 billion eggs a year, more than 6 billion of them destined for export.

Two of the three Dutch infections are the H5N8 strain of the illness, which has also been found on farms in Germany and Britain in recent weeks.

The H5N8 strain has never been detected in humans, but it led to the destruction of millions of farm birds in Asia, mainly South Korea, after an outbreak earlier this year.

Tests showed that the bird flu viruses in Europe are similar to one that devastated poultry flocks in South Korea, the intergovernmental World Organization for Animal Health said.

The Dutch measure, which has also halted all exports, could soon lead to shortages of chicken meat and eggs in the European Union because the Dutch are the region's top supplier of both eggs and poultry meat.

With a population of less than 17 million, the Netherlands is the world's second largest exporter of agricultural products after the United States, selling $79 billion euros ($99 billion) of agricultural goods abroad last year.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Alison Williams)


http://news.yahoo.com/third-dutch-chicken-farm-infected-bird-flu-government-101508559.html

[Buster's Uncle]

New bird flu cluster identified in Netherlands
Associated Press  24 minutes ago



AMSTERDAM (AP) — Dutch authorities Friday said they will slaughter poultry at a cluster of three farms after new cases of bird flu were found in the town of Kamperveen, in the third outbreak in the Netherlands this week.

A new infection was detected Friday morning at a chicken farm in Kamperveen, roughly a hundred kilometers (60 miles) away from the previous infections, the Economic Affairs Ministry said. During a check of nearby farms, one farm was found with birds showing signs of illness.

At least 25,000 chickens and ducks are being slaughtered on the farms and the ministry said it has also ordered birds slaughtered at a third farm as a precaution, given its location within a kilometer (mile) radius of the first two.

The ministry said tests to determine the exact strain of the virus are being conducted. The earlier Dutch cases and another this week at a duck farm in England were confirmed as H5N8, which British officials said poses a very low public health risk.

The government has banned the transport of poultry and eggs nationwide.

Although damages have been limited so far, the chairman of the country's Poultry Farmers' Union said Friday the outbreak in the new location is worrying, given there are 34 more poultry farms within a 10 kilometer radius.

In 2003 a major outbreak of bird flu in the Netherlands caused an estimated 300 million euros in damages.


http://news.yahoo.com/third-farm-bird-flu-identified-netherlands-111242350.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Intensive Dutch animal farms seen vulnerable to disease
Reuters
By Thomas Escritt  17 minutes ago



A man wearing a protective mask and suit inspects a container containing eggs and the bodies of culled chickens at a poultry farm, where a highly contagious strain of bird flu was found by Dutch authorities, in Hekendorp November 17, 2014. REUTERS/Marco De Swart



AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Agriculture has helped make the Netherlands rich, but experts warn that the density of farms and the increasing number of animals in one of the most intensive agricultural sectors in the world make it vulnerable to diseases.

The discovery last Sunday of a highly infectious strain of bird flu at a Dutch farm forced officials to impose a three-day lockdown on the transport of all poultry and related products.

But the transport freeze, which cost the industry 100 million euros ($120 million), did not stop the discovery of similar or identical strains at two nearby farms, forcing the already expensive halt to be extended to a full week.

"When there is a disease in the Netherlands, which is the country in the world where the concentration of farms is the highest, be it for poultry or pigs, it hurts," said Bernard Vallat, head of the World Organization for Animal Health.

"The Netherlands are really vulnerable because of this density (of farms)," he told Reuters.

Dutch agriculture defends its practices, with the poultry industry pointing out it has invested hugely in hygiene since the last bird flu epidemic 11 years ago.

While the industry has become an incredible source of wealth -- agriculture amounted for 16 percent of 2013 exports -- efficiency has come at a cost. Experts said having so many farms and animals packed together has made the system highly vulnerable to disease.

The farming industry runs at a rate that even the transport lockdown could not stop. In three days, around 7.5 million chicks hatched in incubation warehouses with nowhere to go.

The latest infection of bird flu -- the ninth animal epidemic in the Netherlands in less than 20 years -- has already forced the culling of more than 200,000 birds.



A digger is used to dump eggs and chickens into a container at a poultry farm, where a highly contagious strain of bird flu was found by Dutch authorities, in Hekendorp November 17, 2014. REUTERS/Marco De Swart


"It's this most amazing logistical system," said Clemens Driessen, a bioethicist at Wageningen University, a leading agricultural research center. "But as soon as you say you can no longer transport the animals, it all starts to unravel."

Since 1997, 40 million hens, cows, goats, pigs and sheep have been slaughtered to contain outbreaks including swine flu, foot-and-mouth and "mad cow" disease.

The Netherlands is the world's second largest agricultural exporter after the United States, selling more than 79 billion euros ($98 billion) worth of goods abroad last year. It is the world's leading egg exporter and largest supplier of poultry meat in the European Union.


103 MILLION CHICKENS

High-intensity farms house millions of animals -- 103 million chickens, 12 million pigs, 4 million cows and millions more sheep, turkeys, ducks, rabbits and goats.

New technology has brought massive strides in productivity, with advances in the vast warehousing systems that hatch, feed, and water broiler chickens.

The average number of hens per hatchery has doubled in 13 years, according to Statistics Netherlands, while the cow population has risen by a half to 1.5 million. There are now 83 cows per farm, up from 51 in 2000.

The country's pig population, at 12 million, has changed little from 13 years ago, but the average number of pigs per farm has almost doubled to 2,200.

The density is at its highest in the south east of the country, where at least 20 million chickens are found in a district called De Peel.

Animal welfare groups say conditions go beyond being morally objectionable and that the farming practice has become an incubator for disease.

"The intensive conditions in factory farming provide a pressure cooker in which diseases like avian flu can spread very easily and can also evolve very easily," said Geert Laugs, Netherlands director at pressure group Compassion in World Farming.

Geert Jan Oplaat, president of the Poultry Farmers' Association, disagreed.

"A chicken is seven times more at risk of flu if it goes outside," said Oplaat. "It's almost irresponsible to keep chickens outside during a high flu-risk period."

But unease is also reflected in the shopping -- and voting -- habits of the Dutch. The Netherlands in 2006 elected the first animal rights party in the world into parliament.

Party for the Animals leader Marianne Thieme has no doubt that the treatment of farm animals helped win her party the 120,000 votes needed to win its two seats.

"You have an industry focused on keeping the costs as low as possible, giving as little feed as possible," she told Reuters. "We don’t see animals as animals any more but as products."

Demand is also increasing for meat from free range farms, with Albert Hein, the country’s largest supermarket, and its competitors advertising more organic produce.

"We've been waiting for this," said Hanneke van Ormondt of animal rights group Wakker Dier. "We've been saying for ever there's too many animals in the Netherlands, too much transportation, too big a scale."

(Additional reporting by Sybille de la Hamaide in Paris; Editing by Anthony Deutsch and Giles Elgood)


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