There’s a very good article in October Birdwatch by David Campbell – of course it doesn’t make happy reading but it covers the ground and the issues well, including some interesting international aspects. As the article says ‘…losses were catastrophic’.
On Farming Today this morning (click here about 7 minutes into the programme) there was discussion of vaccinating commercial flocks of poultry, but this seems to have quite a few drawbacks at the moment – including the fact that it probably won’t work very well! My ears pricked up when I heard ‘We must be clear, vaccination can only be one arm of the control programme. The baseline of any control programme has to be, to prevent the virus entering your farm or your birds and so good biosecurity is critical to that.‘. What a pity then, that we understand so little about the mechanism by which the virus does get into poultry sheds. What is the link, the actual real link, between wild birds and infections in closed poultry units? I’ve been asking this question since at least 2016 on this blog (see here) and actually for much longer, but we do not appear to be much further fowrward with it. That’s because DEFRA has been content to be in ignorance so that they can say ‘wild birds’ over and over again, I reckon.
I also hear rumours that DEFRA is seriously considering admitting that bird/poultry flu is now endemic in the UK.
Tomorrow will probably see the weekly update on cases of bird flu in wild birds.
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