Major poultry and egg producers breathed a sigh of relief over the Easter weekend when a suspected case of highly pathogenic avian influenza on a supply managed farm finally tested negative. However, the discovery of new foci of infection continues to give duck exporters headaches.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
A fourth outbreak of avian flu has been detected in a farm in Estrie, confirmed the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on Sunday evening. But it was a previous announcement, the day before, that had more of an impact on the large producers of chickens, turkeys and eggs under supply management.
The analyzes carried out in a commercial herd of Saint-Alphonse-de-Granby proved negative, learned the industry on Saturday. It was the first time a producer under supply management had been investigated since the virus broke out on Quebec farms last week.
“We were hot, the whole industry was hot,” commented the spokesperson for the Quebec Poultry Disease Control Team (EQCMA), Marie-Hélène Jutras.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
hatching eggs
“There are a lot of farms in that area. It’s a crowded sector, whether it’s table eggs, hatching eggs or chicken,” explained Ms.me Jutras, without specifying the name or the production of the farm which was the subject of the investigation.
The Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ) has reminded owners of farmed birds to avoid all contact with wild birds, currently during the migration period, and to increase the measures biosecurity to prevent the virus from spreading from farm to farm.
The risks for the sector under supply management are particularly great in regions with a high concentration of poultry farms, such as Beauce, Montérégie and Saint-Félix-de-Valois, in Lanaudière, underlines the Dr Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt, professor at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Montreal.
The scariest place is Saint-Félix-de-Valois, you can visit around thirty farms on foot, they are so close together. [Si une éclosion se déclarait dans le rang qui en compte le plus]it would be nearly impossible for there to be just one case.
The Dr Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt, professor at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Montreal
The fourth case confirmed on Sunday evening, an unidentified farm in the MRC Les Sources, is in a region with “a very low density of poultry farms”, indicated the EQCMA, which drew around a “biosecurity zone enhanced” encompassing the municipalities of Saint-Georges-de-Windsor and Wotton.
Infected herds are culled. Without culling, the highly pathogenic virus would kill at least 90% of the herd anyway.
The export puzzle
The circulating virus has hit more than 800 herds on four continents. France has already identified 1,286 outbreaks and the United States, 189. In Canada, a first herd was affected at the end of December in Newfoundland, but the first commercial farm affected was spotted at the end of January in Nova Scotia.
“We’ve been a little on edge since then,” summarizes Robert Caswell, president of the Association of Duck and Goose Breeders of Quebec (AECOQ) and general manager of Hudson Valley Farms, in Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague, in Monteregie.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Brome Lake Duck Farm
Hudson Valley is the second largest duck producer in Quebec. Unlike the number one in the industry, Canards du Lac Brome, of which one site (Saint-Claude) was infected and another (Knowlton) was quarantined, the Hudson Valley subcontractors, who are in Montérégie , have not been hit by the virus. But the company, which generates 65% of its turnover abroad, is still affected.
The market in Brazil, which refuses poultry products from H5N1-affected countries, closed with the first Nova Scotian case. Singapore had the same reflex, before agreeing to do like the United States and excluding only what comes from the “primary control zone” established by the CFIA, within a radius of approximately 10 kilometers around each infected commercial farm.
Right now, it’s easily 10% of turnover that will be affected… if it stops.
Robert Caswell, President of the Quebec Duck and Goose Breeders Association
The more cases there are, the greater the risk that a farm will be excluded because it is too close to an infected farm. And the area must be case-free for six months before its products can be exported again.
“For the moment, the end-of-season market, November and December, which is huge for our sector, can still be saved, if there are no new cases”, underlines the president of the AECOQ.
“We have to stick together and end up putting biosecurity solutions into effect so that it stops,” he said, calling for training and awareness-raising for everyone, “whether it’s the deliverers of ducks, chickens, feed, the poultry catchers, all the people who enter your barn and go to another farm”.