So the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has arrived in Britain after winging its way around the world – not just under the self-propelled movement of wild birds, but also, it seems, the systematic and deliberate air miles notched up by a globalised poultry industry and trade in live birds. It was only a matter of time.
But whilst the government has doubtless been sharing in the collective sigh of relief over the fact that the Cellardyke swan doesn’t seem to have been the harbinger of a major outbreak, this is no time for complacency. Britain hasn’t been given the all clear, just a little more time to work out what to do about an outbreak which government scientists have declared “inevitable”.
Make no mistake: bird flu is potentially disastrous. Although it has only infected about 200 people worldwide, half of whom have died, scientist are warning it could mutate further into a form transmissible from human to human. This could, potentially, create the conditions for a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic responsible for at least 50 million – and maybe as many as 100 million – deaths worldwide. A government contingency plan leaked last week warns that 100,000 children could die in the UK alone.
If the government is to prevent this sort of doomsday scenario, it is crucial that it uses this time to develop an understanding of the factors that cause the disease’s development and spread.
Predictably there is little sign that it is doing so. In spite of the fact that an increasing number of analysts are now making the case that the virus is spread not just under the self-propelled movement of wild birds, but also the systematic and deliberate air miles notched up by live poultry and poultry products, official policies are being based on an incomplete assumption: that H5N1 has evolved through the interaction of outdoor free-range and backyard flocks with wild birds, which then act as a vector for the strain by spreading it as they migrate.
Bird flu is endemic in wild birds in much of the world – and always has been – without leaping the species barrier and causing people any harm. Highly pathogenic strains are very rare in wild birds; one (H5N3) was first detected in South Africa more than 40 years ago, but it wasn’t until 1997 that the current highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 emerged, capable of infecting people, and already responsible for some hundred human deaths, mostly in the developing world.
Highly pathogenic viruses evolve in domestic poultry, and industrialised indoor poultry farms provide the perfect conditions: they are warm, crowded, nutrient-rich environments, heavy with “viral load”. It also seems that the spread of H5N1 has followed human trade routes, not migratory bird routes, according to a growing number of experts. The respected medical journal the Lancet, for example, reports: “ ... the geographic spread of the disease does not correlate with migratory routes and seasons. The pattern of outbreaks follows major road and rail routes, not flyways.”
Could we be unwittingly facilitating the spread of H5N1 around the world by creating a perfect vector: the international trade in live poultry products?
We certainly trade a lot of poultry products, both live birds and their “waste” – the fecal matter and feathers processed and sold on as fish farm fertiliser or animal feed, both within and beyond the EU.
Much of this trade takes the form of a bizarre great food swap, with millions of live birds passing each other as countries trade back and forth between themselves.
Britain exports almost 10m kg of poultry and eggs to Ireland every year for example – and in the same year we import some 6.5m. We “swap” 1.1m kg of live birds for 1.9m kg from France, which last month confirmed its first case of H5N1 in a domestic poultry flock. Almost 3m kg of birds are traded back – and forth – between the UK and the Netherlands, according to HM Customs figures for 2005.
And we don’t confine the bizarre trade to EU countries: until a recent ban was imposed in response to the latest human deaths from bird flu, EU imports of poultry products from Brazil and Thailand were significant and rising.
And, though the relatively small number of cases and lack of information mean no links have been established in the EU (yet), the evidence from Cambodia, Nigeria and China is that new outbreaks of bird flu have coincided with the import of live poultry products, rather than the arrival of wild birds.
Of course wild birds play a role in spreading the virus: as they come into contact with poultry some species pass on the milder, endemic form of the virus – and after it has mutated into its highly pathogenic form they catch it back and spread it to other nearby flocks. But, as BirdLife International put it, wild birds are primarily victims rather then vectors of H5N1. They say many questions remain concerning the effects of the virus on wild birds and how efficiently they can spread it to other wild birds or to domestic poultry. They point out that, with the exception of the Rügen Island outbreak in Germany, which killed over 100 wild birds, the incidents reported in Europe this spring involve single birds or very small numbers.
Clearly we need more research to better understand what role the trade in industrially produced poultry has in the spread of the virus. But in the meantime we must adopt a precautionary approach based on relocalising the poultry sector, stopping the great poultry swap and devising and introducing transitional measures to make sure farmers and those in the developing world don’t suffer unduly as a result.
In the short term, the government’s priority must be to prevent the disease spreading to poultry farms by culling any domestic flocks that do become infected and vaccinating those nearby to ringfence any infection.
Any large-scale move to ordering free-range farmers to coop their birds up indoors will increase overcrowding and stress amongst poultry at the same time as reducing their natural immunity to viral infection.
In the longer term, we must seek to close the international trade in wild birds and relocalise our poultry industry, but that would require a revision of the WTO and EU rules, and that’s just too radical a prospect for many. It’s much easier to blame wild birds and the backyard and small-scale farmers than place the global agri-business sector under the spotlight. We must also be prepared to give real support to less developed countries to help them deal with the virus, especially those in Africa and Asia more dependent on poultry as a source of protein, and where immunity is compromised due to HIV/AIDS and the effects of poverty.
Failing to tackle the root causes of pathogenic bird flu could be devastating. As Professor Mike Davis writes in The Monster at our Door, backyard poultry and wild birds are acting as the fuse, but it’s the indoor intensively farmed flocks which are the explosive charge.
Putting out the current fuse might hold back the explosion for now, but it still leaves the potential for the charge to detonate – with devastating consequences – later.
So the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has arrived in Britain after winging its way around the world – not just under the self-propelled movement of wild birds, but also, it seems, the systematic and deliberate air miles notched up by a globalised poultry industry and trade in live birds. It was only a matter of time.
But whilst the government has doubtless been sharing in the collective sigh of relief over the fact that the Cellardyke swan doesn’t seem to have been the harbinger of a major outbreak, this is no time for complacency. Britain hasn’t been given the all clear, just a little more time to work out what to do about an outbreak which government scientists have declared “inevitable”.
Make no mistake: bird flu is potentially disastrous. Although it has only infected about 200 people worldwide, half of whom have died, scientist are warning it could mutate further into a form transmissible from human to human. This could, potentially, create the conditions for a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic responsible for at least 50 million – and maybe as many as 100 million – deaths worldwide. A government contingency plan leaked last week warns that 100,000 children could die in the UK alone.
If the government is to prevent this sort of doomsday scenario, it is crucial that it uses this time to develop an understanding of the factors that cause the disease’s development and spread.
Predictably there is little sign that it is doing so. In spite of the fact that an increasing number of analysts are now making the case that the virus is spread not just under the self-propelled movement of wild birds, but also the systematic and deliberate air miles notched up by live poultry and poultry products, official policies are being based on an incomplete assumption: that H5N1 has evolved through the interaction of outdoor free-range and backyard flocks with wild birds, which then act as a vector for the strain by spreading it as they migrate.
Bird flu is endemic in wild birds in much of the world – and always has been – without leaping the species barrier and causing people any harm. Highly pathogenic strains are very rare in wild birds; one (H5N3) was first detected in South Africa more than 40 years ago, but it wasn’t until 1997 that the current highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 emerged, capable of infecting people, and already responsible for some hundred human deaths, mostly in the developing world.
Highly pathogenic viruses evolve in domestic poultry, and industrialised indoor poultry farms provide the perfect conditions: they are warm, crowded, nutrient-rich environments, heavy with “viral load”. It also seems that the spread of H5N1 has followed human trade routes, not migratory bird routes, according to a growing number of experts. The respected medical journal the Lancet, for example, reports: “ ... the geographic spread of the disease does not correlate with migratory routes and seasons. The pattern of outbreaks follows major road and rail routes, not flyways.”
Could we be unwittingly facilitating the spread of H5N1 around the world by creating a perfect vector: the international trade in live poultry products?
We certainly trade a lot of poultry products, both live birds and their “waste” – the fecal matter and feathers processed and sold on as fish farm fertiliser or animal feed, both within and beyond the EU.
Much of this trade takes the form of a bizarre great food swap, with millions of live birds passing each other as countries trade back and forth between themselves.
Britain exports almost 10m kg of poultry and eggs to Ireland every year for example – and in the same year we import some 6.5m. We “swap” 1.1m kg of live birds for 1.9m kg from France, which last month confirmed its first case of H5N1 in a domestic poultry flock. Almost 3m kg of birds are traded back – and forth – between the UK and the Netherlands, according to HM Customs figures for 2005.
And we don’t confine the bizarre trade to EU countries: until a recent ban was imposed in response to the latest human deaths from bird flu, EU imports of poultry products from Brazil and Thailand were significant and rising.
And, though the relatively small number of cases and lack of information mean no links have been established in the EU (yet), the evidence from Cambodia, Nigeria and China is that new outbreaks of bird flu have coincided with the import of live poultry products, rather than the arrival of wild birds.
Of course wild birds play a role in spreading the virus: as they come into contact with poultry some species pass on the milder, endemic form of the virus – and after it has mutated into its highly pathogenic form they catch it back and spread it to other nearby flocks. But, as BirdLife International put it, wild birds are primarily victims rather then vectors of H5N1. They say many questions remain concerning the effects of the virus on wild birds and how efficiently they can spread it to other wild birds or to domestic poultry. They point out that, with the exception of the Rügen Island outbreak in Germany, which killed over 100 wild birds, the incidents reported in Europe this spring involve single birds or very small numbers.
Clearly we need more research to better understand what role the trade in industrially produced poultry has in the spread of the virus. But in the meantime we must adopt a precautionary approach based on relocalising the poultry sector, stopping the great poultry swap and devising and introducing transitional measures to make sure farmers and those in the developing world don’t suffer unduly as a result.
In the short term, the government’s priority must be to prevent the disease spreading to poultry farms by culling any domestic flocks that do become infected and vaccinating those nearby to ringfence any infection.
Any large-scale move to ordering free-range farmers to coop their birds up indoors will increase overcrowding and stress amongst poultry at the same time as reducing their natural immunity to viral infection.
In the longer term, we must seek to close the international trade in wild birds and relocalise our poultry industry, but that would require a revision of the WTO and EU rules, and that’s just too radical a prospect for many. It’s much easier to blame wild birds and the backyard and small-scale farmers than place the global agri-business sector under the spotlight. We must also be prepared to give real support to less developed countries to help them deal with the virus, especially those in Africa and Asia more dependent on poultry as a source of protein, and where immunity is compromised due to HIV/AIDS and the effects of poverty.
Failing to tackle the root causes of pathogenic bird flu could be devastating. As Professor Mike Davis writes in The Monster at our Door, backyard poultry and wild birds are acting as the fuse, but it’s the indoor intensively farmed flocks which are the explosive charge.
Putting out the current fuse might hold back the explosion for now, but it still leaves the potential for the charge to detonate – with devastating consequences – later.