SA’s poultry industry is facing its worst outbreak of avian influenza, with about a third of egg-laying chickens and a quarter of broiler-breeding chickens dying from the virus or being culled.
The virus, new in SA and identified as H7N6, has spread from Mpumalanga, where it was detected in early June to Gauteng, parts of Limpopo and Rustenburg in North West.
“Chickens are dropping like flies. We are currently being ravaged by bird flu,” Chris Schutte, the CEO of Astral Foods, said in an investor call on Thursday.
Schutte said the outbreak is so bad it is “the talk of town”. He and his management team get updates every 30 minutes on the disease, which does not spread to humans but rapidly kills chickens.
Farmers must by law cull infected flocks to try to eliminate the disease, but this is not bringing it under control. The outbreak has already led to egg shortages in Gauteng.
Adel van der Merwe, an executive at NuLaid’s eggs and farming operations, part of the listed Quantum group, said one of its Western Cape farms was infected with a different strain “and now more of Quantum Foods’ farms in Gauteng and North West have been affected”.
Eight of 19 Rainbow Chicken farms in Gauteng are affected by bird flu, but the brand’s farms in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape are not affected, owner RCL Foods has confirmed.
It is not clear if there will be chicken shortages as importers could bring in more stock and SA’s largest producer, Astral, has an excess stock of chickens.
But the outbreak will devastate the R59bn poultry industry, which employs more than 55,000 people directly and is already facing losses of hundreds of millions of rand.
It does not get compensation from the government for forced culling, as farmers in many other countries do.
“The enormous financial impact on producers through the current disease control measure of culling is not sustainable,” the SA Poultry Association said in a statement.
Van der Merwe said the law specifies that the government is supposed to compensate producers for their losses.
“However, this is not happening and it is placing the sustainability of the industry at risk ... This could also lead to non-reporting of the disease.”
Small Talk Daily analyst Anthony Clark criticised the “fact that government is unwilling to compensate the poultry sector for avian influenza when every other country in the world does.”
Schutte warned that the lack of compensation means some farms are not destroying birds but are instead selling live chickens to markets, making control difficult and leading to the spread of the disease. Multiple sources said birds are sold off informally instead of being culled. The live chicken price has also dropped, suggesting an increase in birds for sale.
“They are hiding this disease or not culling at the rate they should. That builds up a viral load in high-density areas and causes further spread,” he said.
Shahn Bisschop, the MD of Avimune and a veterinary consultant to the poultry industry, said this is by far the worst outbreak of avian influenza in the country and the worst outbreak of any avian disease in 25 years of his career in the industry. At least 25% of all broiler breeder hens that lay eggs to produce chickens for meat production are already dead.
He and the SA Poultry Association say permission is needed from the government to vaccinate healthy chickens. As bird flu is a disease that is dealt with by culling birds, vaccines are not an approved measure as they make the virus harder to detect. He said: “We desperately need permission from the government for emergency use of vaccines.”
The industry is in talks with the department of agriculture. The department did not respond to requests for comment.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.