Bird/poultry flu update

Today I will carefully be reading this, Risk Assessment on the spread of
High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 to wild birds from released, formerly captive gamebirds in Great Britain: Pheasants (click here), which was rather quietly released by Defra yesterday. My aim is to blog about this by the end of the day, but it not today, then tomorrow.

The executive summary of the risk assessment contains this paragraph which is pretty important:

This risk assessment concludes that, during an exceptional season such as the year 2022, when there is continual HPAI circulation in Great Britain wild bird populations (wild bird risk is still at MEDIUM in July and August) the release of several millions of captive pheasants during July and August 2022 has a very high likelihood of infecting one or more wild birds with HPAI H5N1 in the vicinity of release sites in many types of habitat. As well as the welfare impact of  released pheasants becoming infected with HPAI, these susceptible pheasant
populations could result in maintenance of HPAI H5N1 in the other wild bird populations and ultimately lead to increased infection pressure to resident wild birds over the late summer and early autumn, before migratory waterfowl species arrive in Great Britain in late autumn.

However, it isn’t quite as simple as that.

But then again, it certainly isn’t remotely as simple as this hopeless ‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’ assessment from GWCT – click here.

You may remember that Defra published A Mitigation Strategy for Avian Influenza in Wild Birds in England and Wales (click here) on 31 August (see my comments on it from 1 September – click here) where gamebird releases were discussed rather peremptorily in Section 18. The risk assessment published yesterday was being prepared, and may well have been at an advanced stage of preparation, at that time.

Defra, particularly the Chief Vet, and particularly the minister Lord Benyon, should be asked the following questions (for starters):

• why was the risk assessment published yesterday not commissioned earlier this spring/summer when it was obvious to all that bird flu in the UK had entered a new and very different phase. Were Defra, as the RSPB suggested in July (click here), simply ‘asleep at the wheel’ ?
• why was the risk assessment only published yesterday when it was finalised over 6 weeks ago, perhaps more like 11 weeks ago?  What purpose was served by the delay?
• since the risk assessment published yesterday can be summed up as saying ‘if Pheasants already infected with bird flu are released into the countryside for shooting that’ll be bad news AND EVEN if no Pheasants are released already infected with bird flu they’ll get it from wild birds post-release and then pass it on to others and that will be bad news too’, and that that was blindingly obvious to many of us back in early summer, why did Defra not act on that this year and prevent releases of gamebirds?

Or I could put this another way, to allow releases of millions of gamebirds into the countryside this summer looked to a great many people with some nous as a remarkably stupid thing to do. So why did Defra (and devolved administrations) allow it? Was it because they had less biological nous than the rest of us (ie they were stupid) or was it because they were so in hock to shooting interests that they simply didn’t bother to reduce the risks? If there is another explanation then please provide it.

 

 

 

[registration_form]