Cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza were first detected in Quebec in 2022. Since then, more than a million birds have been infected, leaving affected producers traumatized and keeping those spared on alert.
Since the beginning of the year, three farms have reported the presence of highly pathogenic avian influenza type H5N1, and the most recent case dates back to April 10, the Ministry of Health said. This bodes well for now, compared to the 28 sites affected in 2023 and 23 sites in 2022.
According to the most recent data from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, 1.4 million birds have been infected in Quebec, placing it third among the hardest-hit provinces, behind Alberta (1.8 million) and British Columbia (6 million).
However, the summer season is just beginning and producers are more concerned about the fall, when migratory birds – which spread the disease – are flying over the fields in large numbers.
“We cannot help but think about it, especially during periods of migration. […] “When you walk on the farm and you hear a sailboat of geese passing over the farm, you can no longer say that you find it pretty. It worries us more because you hear the noise, and lots of images come to mind and the dangers of contamination,” said Benoît Fontaine, president of the Éleveurs de volailles du Québec.
Services to keep birds away from agricultural sites are also offered by the Union of Agricultural Producers.
Pierre-Luc Leblanc, a turkey and poultry farmer from Montérégie, experienced an ordeal in December 2023 when the virus entered one of his buildings despite all the biosecurity standards in place.
He is pleased with the caseload for 2024, but he is not letting his guard down. “For the fall, we are not out of the woods yet, it will come. In my case, there were a lot of migratory birds the week before I was infected,” he says.
In Quebec, when a case is detected, all birds on the farm must be euthanized and the buildings must be disinfected from top to bottom.
“The fear is not to experience the financial loss, it is to relive all the steps to restart the site. The financial loss is boring, we do not want to lose money in life, but to think again about euthanizing the birds and doing the composting especially… Washing is not so bad, […] but euthanasia and compost, I’m scared to death, I don’t want to go through that again,” said Mr. Leblanc.
Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt, a professor at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the Université de Montréal, points out that breeders are attached to their animals on several levels. “These are people who are proud of what they do, they provide a source of quality protein that doesn’t cost too much,” he explains.
Mr. Fontaine confirms that it is “a very serious trauma” for some breeders. “We are there at the heart of farming families and psychological support at the Union des producteurs du Québec to support people who are going through this ordeal,” he says.
Food waste is also a consequence. “We raise these animals to ultimately consume them, but not to destroy them along the way while they are still adolescents. It is food waste, it is a financial loss, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency — which does an excellent job — still takes control of your farm, no less. So you are at home without being there. It is traumatic,” adds Mr. Fontaine.
Compost from carcasses
In 2023, Pierre-Luc Leblanc owned three buildings with a total of 32,000 turkeys and four buildings with 90,000 chickens. All the birds had to be slaughtered.
He will remember for the rest of his life the call from the vet who gave him the bad news. “Your legs fall off when you leave,” he recalls.
From that moment on, he felt an enormous pressure. “Life stops turning. Everything you have around this site no longer matters, family, there is nothing that matters anymore. You react to protect. And at the same time, you are not without thinking about the financial risk. You think about your birds that you will not sell,” he admits.
Mr. Leblanc immediately wanted to ensure that his staff was safe given the risk of transmission to humans, although it was minimal.
For his farm, the euthanasia procedure was completed in five days. The carcasses cannot be moved elsewhere because of the risk of spreading the disease. Dead birds must be composted on site, a particularly difficult step for the producer and his employees.
“It’s work that is inhumane, what we are asked to do, in terms of mental health. You have to coordinate the euthanasia with the team that comes to do it. Post-euthanasia, you and your staff have to compost your birds on your own site,” describes Mr. Leblanc.
“You load up dead birds, you have a white carpet of dead birds on the site. Just to see the image… it’s unbelievable what the producer has to go through, but my colleagues have gone through it too,” he continues.
Mr. Leblanc’s only wish was to “return to normal life.”
Five weeks later, after the decontamination stage of the buildings, new birds were able to settle in. During the first months, Mr. Leblanc was afraid to enter his buildings for fear of recontaminating his birds. “We know that the big risk is we who do it. […] It really has to be a sterile area. I was so scared. You know you had a nightmare yesterday, but you know you’re going to have more.”
Financial losses
Avian flu also has financial repercussions for the community. “It can have quite significant impacts for ordinary people. Financially, just looking at the Americans, the price of eggs has increased enormously recently,” says Professor Vaillancourt.
In Canada, the government compensates the producer for the market value of the birds that are destroyed and the entire process of depopulation and disposal of infected carcasses, but not for disinfection.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency oversees the cleanup work, but it is the producer’s responsibility to sanitize the premises.
Mr. Leblanc had poultry worth a million dollars, and despite financial compensation of that value, he estimates he lost $350,000.
Martin Pelletier, agronomist and coordinator of the Quebec Poultry Disease Control Team, said there is an insurance program developed in partnership with the industry that covers a large portion of the cleaning and disinfection costs.
“There are always losses that the producer will assume, because if his herd is depopulated, and sometimes that cuts his production cycle, he cannot necessarily resume his production in time,” he explains.
According to him, if personnel costs are taken into account, the Government of Canada would have spent nearly $300 million in connection with avian flu since the end of 2021.
Mr. Leblanc hopes that if a cure or vaccine is found, export rules would be relaxed, because currently, several countries do not accept meat from vaccinated animals. “But we have to solve the problem, we cannot live year after year with this pressure as a breeder and as a society,” he argues.