Poultry Farmers Say They’re Ready to Battle Bird Flu

By Joseph Ascenzi, The Business Press, San Bernardino, Calif.

Mar. 27–Although Avian influenza has yet to hit the United States, Ham & Eggs Ranch in Norco is taking no chances with its 300 birds.

Owner Celeste Tittle has no employees. Only a handful of people–collectors of rare birds, public officials on business–are allowed in her half-acre operation at 1487 Detroit St.

Anyone who gets inside the front gate must wipe their shoes in bleach-treated water when they arrive and again when they leave to protect the poultry from a virus that can make some domesticated birds, including chickens, ducks and turkeys, very sick and even kill them.

Tittle’s birds–a collection that, besides regular poultry includes 14 rare and endangered birds–are caged 10 feet from human contact at all times.

“I talk with people over the front gate or over the telephone, and if I have the kind of bird they’re looking for I give them a time to come pick it up,” she said. “Then I package the bird over the fence. The [client] never gets inside.”

Not everyone likes that impersonal approach, but Tittle doesn’t apologize.

“Some people think I’m telling them they have a disease, but they don’t understand what this is about,” she said. “It’s about where they’ve been walking. It has affected my business, but I think the situation is that serious.”

Detection of bird flu in the United States is “increasingly likely” this year, probably in the Pacific Islands in Alaska where testing will be a priority, U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton said March 20.

The highly contagious and fast-spreading H5N1 virus has spread across Europe, Asia and parts of Africa. The virus can be deadly to poultry and some species of wild birds, and 105 people have died of the virus, according to the World Health Organization.

The humans who have contracted H5N1 so far have done so through close contact with infected birds, said Larry Hawkins, spokesman for the Sacramento office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

But health officials haven’t ruled out the possibility that the virus could be transmitted from one person to another. The Centers for Disease Control and preservation in Atlanta announced March 21 that the H5N 1virus had evolved into two genetically different strains, increasing the chances that the virus could one day be transmitted among humans.

With human-to-human transmission a possibility, Tittle knows that one bad test would almost certainly mean the destruction of her birds.

“This is terrifying because it could put me out of business,” she said. “I don’t mean to be a doomsayer, but if we get hit with this thing, there would come a time where we would have to put our birds down. I understand that’s what they would have to do, because they can’t kill all of the people.”

But a large poultry farm probably won’t be impacted as severely as a small farm, said Matt Flanagan, vice president of Shelton’s Poultry Inc. in Pomona, which operates three ranches that combined contain about 80,000 birds.

“We’re a bigger operation and we’re spread out, so if one ranch gets infected the others won’t automatically be infected,” he said. “But if you’re small, this thing could be devastating. It could kill off an entire flock of birds, and that could put some people out of business for a while. The government would pay people for their lost birds, but that never seems to be enough.”

Flanagan remembers the exotic Newcastle epidemic of 2003, a viral outbreak that demonstrated the difficulty of keeping a fast-spreading virus out of the country.

“I don’t think they can keep it out unless they can stop it in Asia or Africa,” he said. “Newcastle came here from Mexico in the trunk of a car that was carrying some cockfighting birds. That’s the kind of thing you have to be concerned about.”

The H5N1 virus’ incubation period is generally three to five days, and the virus spreads quickly through a flock. But the poultry industry is in a better position to deal with the H5N1 virus because of the Newcastle epidemic, said Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation, a nonprofit in Modesto.

The H5N1 virus is potentially as serious as the Newcastle outbreak was, particularly with the potential for human-to-human transmission, he said.

“I wouldn’t say that the Newcastle outbreak was a blessing, but it did make the industry think more seriously about bio-security,” said Mattos, who oversees the federation’s marketing and government relations activities on behalf of the state’s poultry industry. “The public got the message during the Newcastle outbreak, and as a result I think we’re in a better position to deal with this virus.”

But the message on the H5N1 virus might be sinking in slowly. Only 34 percent of U.S. companies surveyed by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a global financial management consulting firm in Washington, D.C., said they were greatly or moderately concerned about a possible bird flu outbreak.

Only 15 percent of the companies surveyed said they have a plan to deal with an outbreak, according to the survey released March 21.

“It could arrive in North America before this year or it could not, but we’re operating on the assumption that it will,” said Steve Lyle, spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

The department tests about 100,000 birds a year, part of a program left in place after the Newcastle outbreak, Lyle said.

—–

To see more of The Business Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thebizpress.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Business Press, San Bernardino, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.