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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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MONTH: March 2006
H5N1 may halt European movement to free-range poultry-raising
LONDON––The Tower of London ravens will be indoor cage birds until the H5N1 crisis subsides, says raven keeper Derrick Coyle.
Legend has it that if the ravens ever leave the Tower, the British monarchy will fall––and keeping the ravens indoors sets an example for poultry farmers.
Just as animal welfare concerns made “free range” a household phrase and free range poultry growing began to take market share from intensive confinement, H5N1 might kill the whole concept.
“In the protection zone,” to be established around all H5N1 outbreaks within the European Union, the European Commission decreed on February 12, 2006, “poultry must be kept indoors.”
Agreed United Nations Food & Agricultural Organization senior officer of animal production and health Juan Lubroth, “People need to ensure that poultry are roofed-in to avoid contact with wild birds, and should not mix chickens with other species, such as ducks,” since H5N1 is most likely to mutate into forms that can easily spread when it has the opportunity to move from one species to another.
Austria, Bosnia, France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, and Switzerland have all now ordered that poultry must be kept indoors. Not all are EC members, but all have substantial poultry commerce with the EC.
British policy is that birds must be confined only if H5N1 actually reaches Britain. From 10% to 15% of the estimated 200 million birds on British farms are believed to be free-range.
The National Farmers’ Union contends that ordering an end to free-range poultry growing would be “a massive over-reaction.”
The Austrian confinement order came after the Noah’s Ark sanctuary in Graz illegally housed a swan from a region with known H5N1 outbreaks with two chickens and three ducks. All six birds died, prompting the health ministry to slaughter and test the remains of 30 other birds kept at the sanctuary.
The Cairo Zoo, where hundreds of avian species mingle, was closed for two weeks on February 18 after six of 82 recent bird deaths were confirmed to have been due to H5N1.
Egyptian officials admitted on February 20 that H5N1 was still spreading. “More than 90% of the cases so far have been found in poultry kept in cages on roofs or balconies,” said health minister Hatem Mustafa el-Gabaly, urging that children be kept off of roofs––where poultry yards often double as playgrounds.
As well as ordering birds inside, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece, Iraq, and Turkey have temporarily banned bird hunting.
France pledged to vaccinate 900,000 factory farmed birds against H5N1, but there is growing doubt that vaccination can stop it.
A joint report by 29 eminent virologists, published online on February 7 in Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, warned that H5N1 has developed into four distinct gene strains, and has probably been endemic in southern China since 1996, when a single strain from Guangdong geese was isolated. The more strains there are, the higher the probability of mutations developing that can trigger a global pandemic.
A little girl who loved her chicken |
| An irony of the H5N1 global epidemic is that many of the youngest human victims are those with the most positive attitudes toward poultry––like Sumeyya Makuk of Van, Turkey.
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