Disease-limiting steps, not bird health, drive official avian flu preparations

Pastured poultry producers consider stark options
if US outbreak reported.

By Maggie Fry-Manross

If it comes to confinement: Find ways to minimize crowding, and to keep birds from getting bored or stressed by their unaccustomed restrictions.

January 12, 2006: It seems you can’t turn on TV, radio or computer right now without hearing about “Bird Flu.” Heightened public safety concerns are forcing commercial producers with outdoor flocks to consider new precautions if the threat to US birds seems imminent. If the disease actually reaches a US flock, options could be more drastic.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which surfaced in Thailand and Vietnam in the mid-1990s, has grabbed media attention because of its ability to infect humans who have come in close contact. Among those who have been hospitalized with the disease, about half of the patients have died. What has public health professionals most worried is the remote potential of the virus to mutate into a form that can be passed from person to person.

Unfortunately, public hysteria and government over-reaction to the potential threat may do more damage to the free-range poultry industry than the disease itself. Small-scale poultry producers who pride themselves on raising healthy birds in the open air may be forced to choose between staying in business and confining their flocks during heightened risk periods.

Kip Glass, a pastured poultry producer from Bois D’Arc, Missouri, is concerned about the government response to a possible outbreak. “Like most other producers, I'm worried that this will be an excuse for the USDA to force confinement on small producers,” Glass said. “I'm in a large poultry area here….This is the largest area for confinement poultry in the country. I'm just worried they're going to use it for an excuse to get rid of the little guys.”

Pastured poultry production is a system whereby birds are housed in moveable coops, pens or shelters and are allowed access to green grass, sunlight and fresh air. According to the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association (APPPA) website, birds raised in a pastured poultry setting “receive up to 20 percent of their feed intake from pasture forage. The birds are moved regularly to fresh pasture, which allows the birds to be raised in a cleaner, healthier environment. Pastured poultry is raised the old-fashioned way; on fresh green pasture and wholesome grain.”

Believing in better birds

In confinement systems, thousands of chickens or turkeys per building are kept indoors in crowded conditions, and usually fed antibiotics as a routine part of their diet. Many pastured poultry producers and their customers believe that birds raised outdoors have stronger immune systems and live with less stress than birds raised in confinement and are, therefore, more resistant to diseases.

“There are no documented cases of avian influenza in pastured, free-range, organic birds,” said Jeff Mattocks, organic livestock feed specialist and pastured poultry specialist with Fertrell Inc., a Pennsylvania company that produces organic feed products and soil amendments. “If the immune system is functioning at 100 percent, birds should be able to fight off avian influenza.”

An officer with APPPA, Mattocks reasoned, “I don't have a great concern for the pastured poultry folks getting infected. Sunshine and green grass go a long way to build the immune system and protect the birds.”

Unfortunately, while this position may sound like common sense, there is little or no scientific evidence to support it. “No one has studied the difference in immune system responses in free-range and confined birds,” said Dr. Eric Gingerich, DVM, Staff Veterinarian and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. “A highly pathogenic form of disease like the Asian form will probably affect everyone. Biosecurity is about the only tool we have at this point.”

Official policy: stopping disease

Biosecurity is the practice of ensuring that disease organisms are not spread from one animal population to another. The practice focuses more on preventing the spread of disease than on promoting the organic approach of optimal health of individual birds or of the flock as a whole.

Photo by Deborah Ory Monitor bird condition by carefully observing eyes, mouth and head area for any signs of illness.

According to Madelaine Fletcher, Public Affairs Specialist with the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, biosecurity is the basket where the government has put all of its eggs. “One of the things we've been doing for the past year and a half is outreach and education to people who raise backyard poultry. We've developed quite a few materials on biosecurity.”

A complete description of APHIS’s biosecurity recommendations is available at www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/birdbiosecurity.

While these recommendations might be useful to recreational poultry enthusiasts, they miss the mark for commercial pastured poultry producers. The latter tend to be hands-on business people who pay close attention to the health, nutrition and living conditions of their flocks and fiercely hold one belief in common: confinement is bad for birds.

But if the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza is detected in this country, that is precisely what the USDA will expect them to do. There is no word yet as to how much time producers would be given to get their flocks under cover once the order comes.

Counsel from UK farm group

Organic farmers in the United Kingdom have been considering their options for some time, in light of their experience with Mad Cow Disease and the government response to it. The Soil Association (SA), the largest organic certification organization in the UK, in a briefing paper for its organic poultry producers recommends they take steps appropriate to the threat level:

• The farms considered most at risk for an avian flu outbreak are those in the flight path of migratory birds coming from Asia and other infected areas.

• If an outbreak occurs in Europe, farmers may be forced to move birds into confinement. The SA recommends coops, straw bale structures or polytunnels as temporary bird housing with a stocking density of six birds per square meter (a meter is a little less that a yard) for laying hens. For birds that are used to going outdoors, this may seem too confining and they may become bored and develop bad habits such as feather pecking. To soften the social impact of this suddenly forced closeness, the Soils Association recommends building runs off of the coop. The runs should have a solid roof; small-diameter, wire mesh walls and plenty of bedding. If confinement is required during hot weather, ventilation will have to be considered.

• Recommendations to keep birds active within pens include hanging vegetables or bright objects at pecking height, spreading grain or grit in straw for the birds to scratch through, straw bales or other objects for the birds to perch on and lightweight plastic balls or other toys to attract the birds’ attention.

• If they move birds into temporary confinement, producers should consult their animal nutrition specialist. Confined birds have different nutritional needs than free-ranging birds.

Photo by Jean Nick

“Chicken tractors" (bottomless, portable pasture pens) can be made in a variety of designs. Pens with a door, as shown here, can be used as a night shelter for day-ranging. Clear plastic on two sides protects the birds from blowing rain and wind.

Instead of mandatory culling of all the poultry flocks in an area where infection is found, the SA recommends selective culling followed by “ring vaccination.” This would mean that an infected flock would be killed, but healthy flocks around it would be vaccinated to form a ring around the known outbreak and, hopefully, contain it. The European Union has yet to make a decision on this issue.

Dr. Gingerich considers a vaccination program a possibility for the US. “Vaccination usually reduces the shed rate of the virus significantly,” he said. “It was used successfully in an outbreak of a low pathogenic form of avian flu a few years ago in Connecticut. If we attack the virus agressively when we find the first flock, a minimal number of flocks have to be destroyed. The virus only spread to three flocks in Connecticut.”

No vaccine yet for H5N1

But, Dr. Gingerich points out, the problem in this situation is that there is, as yet, no vaccine to combat this virus. There are vaccines to protect against other forms of avian flu, but none have been developed to provide immunity against the H5N1 Asian form of avian influenza. A vaccination program was undertaken in China in an effort to contain the virus, but it had limited success. “The Chinese program is questionable,” Dr. Gingerich said. “It looks as if the vaccinators may actually be spreading the virus through poor hygiene practices.”

Both Mattocks and Gingerich stress the importance of good management practices to promote poultry health. “Environmental conditions are very important and air quality is the most important of all,” Mattocks said. “Also keep up water quality and feed quality.”

Dr. Gingerich considers pond water a particular source of concern. “The biggest danger is wild waterfowl. They carry avian influenza viruses without showing any symptoms. Ponds on farms are a high-risk situation.” Poultry should not be permitted to drink from a water source that may be visited by wild fowl.

Many small-scale poultry farmers have relationships with the people who buy their birds or eggs. One of the most important things producers can do to protect their businesses from the avian flu threat is to educate their customers, and the public, about the disease and how they raise their birds.

For starters, poultry production in this country contrasts markedly with that in Indo-China, according to pastured poultry producer David Smith of Sparks, Maryland. “In southeast Asia, chickens are kept in mud lots where they walk in excrement all the time. People walk in this excrement in their bare feet and that is how they get the virus,” Smith said. “That isn’t how we raise chickens in this country.” (Initial reports from Turkey this week indicate that the three deaths there were also due to close contact. – Ed.)

Also, producers can point out to their customers that avian flu can not be transmitted by eating poultry products. Even if a bird carried the flu virus, thorough cooking would kill the virus.

Ultimately, most pastured poultry producers recognize that they may have to make hopefully short-lived changes on their farms if the dangerous form of Asian flu reaches the US. Some, like Smith, plan to fence in their day-range shelters if they have to. Others, like Ritch and Glass, would probably go out of the poultry business, at least until the epidemic is over.

“We as a nation do rely on our government to put things in place to keep plagues from moving through the country,” Ritch said. “We want that. If they want us to deflock, I'll deflock.”

Maggie Fry-Manross is a free-lance writer and homesteader who lives in northwestern Pennsylvania. Her family raises poultry, goats, hogs and way too many cats.