Insurance and levy set to protect poultry industry

Mark Williams, chief executive of the British Egg Industry Council, speaking at an avian influenza roadshow event in Penrith, Cumbria.
Mark Williams, chief executive of the British Egg Industry Council, speaking at an avian influenza roadshow event in Penrith, Cumbria.

An industry-wide levy to cover clean-up costs and more extensive housing orders for free range birds were two of the priorities outlined to the FarmingUK by Lion chief Mark Williams when speaking about the threat of avian influenza.

Mark spoke to the FarmingUK during an AI roadshow event near Penrith in Cumbria. The roadshows, which have been held across the country, have been organised by the Poultry Health and Welfare Group (PHWG) – a body made up of organisations representing the various sectors within poultry. They are designed to raise awareness of the threat of AI – a threat that Mark says is huge for the industry.

“It would be fair to say that it is a major issue for the whole of the poultry industry,” he said. “Quite clearly, it’s the biggest threat we face. The sums of money that have been lost in terms of not being able to export high value breeding stock or poultry meat, including old hen meat, out of the European Union into many non-EU countries is huge – it’s north of £50 million at the moment.”

The British Free Range Egg Producers Association (BFREPA) recently struck a ground-breaking deal to secure one million pounds of secondary cleansing and disinfection cover in an agreement with brokers Scrutton Bland. Mark told the FarmingUK that he was pleased that insurance cover was being provided and he said that the whole poultry sector was now making progress in putting together an industry-wide scheme to cover the very high cost of secondary cleansing and disinfection.

“The poultry industry is discussing how we can better prepare for any potential future outbreak. The main concern, aside from the cost for an individual business of losing their birds, which they will get compensation for, is when it comes to cleaning up the unit – the so-called secondary cleansing and disinfection – in the UK that can be very expensive and take quite a long time. So we are looking at funding options to see how producers can protect themselves. Those funding options include insurance and we are really pleased that more and more insurers are coming to the market to provide cover. It’s been very encouraging,” he said.

“We have been discussing this since the Preston outbreak. There was a need for the industry to move forward on that. I think it would be fair to say that the Preston outbreak was really the first time the egg industry has really been hit hard by a bird flu outbreak – not only the poor person at the infected premises but any premises that was effectively put on standstill as part of the tracing exercise. We appreciate the urgency there is as the Poultry Health and Welfare Group to find a solution. Things are starting to come together, which is great.”

The Preston outbreak was at Staveley’s Eggs, where 170,000 free range and cage layers were lost as a result of highly pathogenic bird flu. Dave Staveley has revealed that secondary cleansing and disinfection alone had cost half a million pounds. The total cost of the outbreak was more than a million pounds.

The British Egg Industry Council (BEIC), of which Mark Williams is chief executive, put out an appeal for financial help for Staveley’s to meet the clean-up costs and many companies across the whole poultry sector responded with donations to enable export markets to be restored as quickly as possible. Even with this help, Mark told those attending the Penrith roadshow that the United Kingdom would not regain its disease-free status until February 17.

Poultry sector representatives have been working to create a levy or insurance scheme that would help to cover clean-up costs in future. PHWG met shortly before Christmas and was expected to meet again this month, possibly to agree to a levy scheme that could involve a charge being placed on all chicks. Any proposal of this sort would need to be agreed with hatcheries and pullet rearers.

The majority of those who attended the Penrith event were egg producers, and many of those were free range egg producers. Free range producers, in particular, have been calling for wider use of housing orders in the event of a bird flu outbreak. Currently, housing orders are issued for birds within control zones established by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Producers who shut up their birds outside those areas run the risk of losing their free range status. Members of BFREPA have been calling for housing orders to be applied over a much wider area, and Mark Williams told the FarmingUK at Penrith that BEIC had been lobbying Government about this issue.

“We have made a proposal to Defra which would, effectively, allow the housing of free range birds or, in the case of game birds, their separation from wild birds, in a wider area than what would be the normal three-kilometre protection zone and 10-kilometre surveillance zone. The proposed zone was up to 50 kilometres from the affected premises for a period of no longer than seven days.

“That’s designed to allow the vets and the epidemiologists to ascertain in the early days whether they thought the virus had come in via wild birds or whether it had, perhaps, been carried in on the bottom of a Wellington boot or something like that. Clearly, if it wasn’t wild birds, then those restrictions would be lifted. Defra listened, they understand our concerns. We have agreed that further evidence needs to be provided, which would, first of all, trigger a housing requirement and, equally important, would trigger the exit strategy as well. That is being progressed as we speak,” said Mark.

Vet Will Garton of the Minster Veterinary Practice told farmers attending the Penrith meeting that free range flocks were most at risk from AI, even though bird flu outbreaks could also hit housed birds. He said one of the biggest risks was open water on farms. “I have been on free range farms and seen areas of standing water and wild fowl mixing with free range hens. I have been very surprised.”

Paul Honeyman of the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) spoke of the need for contingency planning in case bird flu should strike. “Plan for it and, hopefully, you will never need to use that plan.”

He also said that the earlier that AI was discovered, the better the chances of success in dealing with it. He pointed to the success of the test for exclusion scheme in helping to find outbreaks early. This scheme enables vets who do not think that bird flu is involved in a particular case to have tests done to rule its presence out. One of the three outbreaks in the UK over the last 12 months – the one in Hampshire – was discovered through test for exclusion.

Mark Williams said that the whole purpose of the AI roadshows was to raise awareness amongst producers and others operating in the poultry industry. “We can stop the disease coming onto farm, keeping bio-security at the highest level at all times, and also keeping good records and having a proper contingency plan in place just in case the worst happened.”

Hopefully, if people were prepared, they would be able to continue to operate their businesses as well as possible in the event of an outbreak.