Marwaan Macan-Markar
CHACHOENGSAO, Sep 6 2006 (IPS) – To be a duck in a modern poultry farm, that conforms to bio-safety measures against bird flu, is to be condemned to a brief, joyless life bereft of sunshine or a pond to take a dip in.
That is the fate of 80,000 ducks currently spending 42 weeks before being slaughtered for the table at the Big Duck Farm located in this province, east of Bangkok.
Visitors to this farm are sprayed with disinfectant and the workers must also shower and shampoo and wear protective clothing before going into the long, low-rise sheds covered with black fabric where the ducks are raised.
We have also begun to check the ducks every eight weeks for avian influenza, says Sompiss Jullabutradee, a consultant at the Big Duck Farm. When you have good bio-security measures, the duck production is very good. The birds are healthy.
And the efforts are paying off at least for the modern farms that have a closed, integrated system in place over two-and-a half years after the deadly H5N1 virus struck Thailand, as it did other countries in North-east and South-east Asia in the winter of 2003. Chachoengsao province was among those badly affected areas during that initial outbreak.
At the beginning of 2004, duck consumption decreased dramatically because of the fear. But it has got better since then, because people know where they can get duck meat that is safe for eating, says Sompiss.
Related IPS Articles
Yet, moves to protect poultry through costly bio-security measures have finished off small-time breeding in this province, which has a mix of industrial estates, paddy fields and open, tree-filled areas that are home to poor farmers. Nearly 1,200 small, backyard poultry farms have been forced to shut down , says Anant Singhattha, provincial officer at the department of livestock development (DLD). They are empty because they failed to meet the new bio-security measures .
About 10,000 families have been affected, he reveals. The government has been helping them to find new work .
Only 430 poultry farms that have bio-security systems are left, he adds. Since avian influenza, the big companies have set up their own farms. Before the outbreak, the big companies depended on contract farming and the suppliers were the smaller poultry farmers .
This shift in favour of bigger, modern production units is in step with Thailand s industrial poultry breeding that contrasts with its neighbours. Till the arrival of the H5N1 virus in late 2003, Thailand was the world s fifth largest exporter of poultry meat, with 70 percent of local production destined for foreign ports.
Not so in the other countries across South-east Asia that have been hit by bird flu, according to a study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). In Vietnam, close to 70 percent of poultry production takes place in small backyard farms. The figure is a high 90 percent for Cambodia while in Indonesia backyard farming accounts for 63 percent of poultry farming.
The current bird flu outbreak has spread to over 50 countries in Asia, Europe and Africa, resulting in millions of chickens and ducks being culled or dying from the disease.
The World Health Organization (WHO) worries that virus could mutate into a species capable of being passed among humans and possibly trigger a pandemic, killing millions of people.
Currently, 141 people have died from 241 reported cases of human infections from contaminated birds. Indonesia is the worst hit, with 46 deaths, Vietnam has had 42 deaths, Thailand has had 16 deaths and Cambodia six deaths, according to the Geneva-based WHO.
Backyard farms and fighting cocks are the biggest problems in Asia for the disease spreading, Parntep Ratanakorn, associate professor of veterinary science at Mahidol University, in Nakhornpathom, said over the weekend at a seminar for journalists from countries that share the Mekong river. Thailand has introduced 32 checkpoints to control the movement of birds .
We have been trying to improve bio-security for farmers because that is the only for way for them to survive, he added. Ducks cannot be left out in the open. They have to be protected with a closed-system, with bird-proof netting.
Dr. Supamit Chunsuttiwat, a senior expert in disease control at the ministry of public health, also conceded that the increase in bio-security measures across the industrial and semi-integrated poultry farms in Thailand have narrowed the area vulnerable to new outbreaks of bird flu. Ninety percent of poultry bred in Thailand is in the industrial integrated system or semi-integrated systems, he says. It is the remaining ten percent of small commercial farms and backyard farms that is the problem.
Little wonder why the Big Duck Farm is winning favour with officials from the DLD, who are holding it up as a success story for other closed-system farms. The monitoring begins even before the parent stocks of ducklings arrives by plane from farms in Lincolnshire, Britain, and continues till the ducks are ready, after 42 weeks of regulated feeding, for the duck meat market.
After this outbreak of avian influenza, the monitoring system has become more formalised, says Anant of the DLD. Our department has set new standards for bio-security.
