Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Dean Stevens
Anyone see the bbc news last night regarding the cull of the turkeys at the Bernard Matthews farm?
I could not believe the sheer negligence portrayed by a local poultry farmer whose birds/chickens were discovered to be roaming free by the bbc. All domesticated birds should be kept indoors or at least caged to prevent any cross contamination with wild birds.
When asked by the reporter why her birds were not kept indoors or in a cage as they should be this women replies "Well it just goes over my head really" I nearly fell off my chair when i heard this. It is negligence and attitudes like this that would contribute vastly to the spreading of avian flu.
It is also attitudes like this that cause accidents within the workplace (Unless you have an excellent H+S culture), so my question is this, are people really educated enough in current issues or is this just sheer negligence at its best?
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Dave Wilson So Organic farming allowing birds to go out side and rummage around is not for you.
Dont know how you can control this unless all poultry is kept inside 24/7.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Dean Stevens
Not my view.
Advice issued by Environment agency / DEFRA.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Lilian McCartney This 'farm' was actually within the quarantine area limit imposed to prevent spread. The lady was spoekn to (caught on camera) by the auhtorities and given time to 'catch all the chickens'.
It's hard to say whether she is unable to understand, hadn't been aware of or delibarately ignoring the quarantine given it was only on camera for a short while.
Hopefully her chooks will be under cover now.
It has to be remembered though that some large free to roam places won't automatically have enough undercover sheds for all their birds and this will take time to get. It makes it doubly important for breeders to be vigilant. Also, those who go to watch or sight-see should also be aware of their actions and possible of transmitting infections (one theory being examined is that somene oculd have walked on bird roppings and then wne tont othe farm and somene else taken it into the shed on their feet.
It'll be interesting to see if they ever find the route in.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Jim Walker The very fact that Matthew's "caged" birds have caused the first major incident of bird flu in the UK, sort of gives lie to the idea that the free range are a greater risk.
Lets keep this in perspective shall we? So far less than 200 people have died from bird flu world wide. Contrast that to the 1000s that are dying needlessly in UK hospitals from hospital acquired infections, due to poor management.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Dave Wilson Nice one Jim!
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By J Knight My mate rears chickens for a living. There are 'catching gangs' roaming the country who round up the birds for processing, as this is labour intensive but periodic. He believes that he is one of about 10% of farmers who insists that gang members wear fresh overalls when they come on his farm; the other 90% don't seem to care. Even on his farm the gangs won't bother to change unless somebody's there to make them. Bird flu aside, this allows avian bronchitis, salmonella and whatever else to spread rapidly throughout the industry.
Bio-security? Well, that would be a good idea,
John
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Dean Stevens
Jim
I hear what your saying but...................
are you not being re-active here instead of pro-active?
I appreciate the spread of disease / infections in hospitols is rife but to be honest i wasn't asking the question "where should our priorities lie?".
Avian flu has the POTENTIAL to kill hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of humans in the long run if it is not controlled properly. As i forgot to mention in my original post, this "farm" in question was within the Bernard Matthews quarentine zone hence my suprise at her negligence / lack of knowledge.
I wasn't really looking to get involved in any kind of argument / fallout, was just asking the question, was this womens attitude down to sheer negligence or lack of knowledge on current issues???
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By AHS The answer is the same as it was in the foot and mouth disaster.
Vaccinate all domestic poultry for about £5 a head!
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Alan Haynes Vaccination won't necessarily work for factory farmed poultry that is being raised for eating [as opposed to for egg production]. The vaccine won't be effective for long enough, owing to the age at which they vaccinate and the following period that it takes to become effective in the bird. By the time the vaccine is effective, the bird is about ready to be killed.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Dean Stevens
I can't see farmers paying for £5 vaccination per bird when they are only going to sell them on for £1-£2 each, i also can't see the government paying for this.
It seems that culling is the only sensible approach at the moment in areas where bird flu is evident.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By John Murgatroyd "Contrast that to the 1000s that are dying needlessly in UK hospitals from hospital acquired infections, due to poor management"
From infections they wouldn't even have become ill from 10 years ago, don't you mean ? Wouldn't have become ill from, because the infection/s were controllable with antibiotics.
I don't mind saying this: Your chances of NOT contracting an infection in a multi-bed ward which has a large amount of staff and visitors wandering about in is not good. If you are already ill, they become smaller. Poor management, yes. But not the hospital management, the management of health resource. The needless use of antibiotics to fatten cattle...and poultry....for profit. Oh, and this is not me speaking, this is a consultant in respiratory disease. 10 years ago none of his patients would have become ill....there were very few antibiotic resistant bacteria. Now there are few that don't exhibit reistance to drugs. In the case of staphlococcus, since it is commonly found on peoples skin, it is obviously going to be hard to keep away from people.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Jim Walker Dean,
We have hijacked your thread, but the theme is true to it (I believe), basically ill educated bureaucrats are likely to make a poor situation worst and them blame the public.
John,
I agree with what you are saying. Particularly high occupancy wards or meat factories (these places are not farms) will always stress the inmates.
However, here is a small observation:
I recently had cause to visit the the "offices" of my local NHS trust - as my old mum would say - you could have eaten your dinner off the floor, everything was spick & span.
I also visited local major hospital - bags of rubbish (including sharps) everywhere awaiting removal, patient showers used as storage space, uneaten meals lying around.
My wife and I went out and bought towels, cleared out the shower and helped the person we were visiting have their first wash for over a week. Please be aware I'm not blaming the ward staff.
Its not a lack of resources.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By AHS IMHO £5 a bird is a small price to pay when one considers the consequences ie human pandemic.
Culling and disposal will not work out much cheaper. They cant sell culled birds for food so thats £2 lost, disposal and incineration could be another £1.
Leaving a real cost of £2 per vaccination a very small outlay.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By anon1234 AHS,
Surely your arguement means that all these farmers would go out of business. You either:
Make a loss because you sell the birds for less than it costs to vaccinate them
OR
You cull them all and make no money
Vaccination would not wipe out disease unless it included all the wild bird population as well.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Tabs Dean wrote: "I wasn't really looking to get involved in any kind of argument / fallout, was just asking the question, was this woman's attitude down to sheer negligence or lack of knowledge on current issues???"
It is possibly both - but listening to the news it was clear that whilst the media is kept fully up to date, the local residents were not.
Not everyone has a TV - let alone watch it. Some of us catch the news only if we forget to change the channel.
If DEFRA want the chickens to be brought indoors, they really should be going around telling people - I know that the vast majority within the zone were sent a text message, but that was done against the "Poultry Register" and it would seem that it is not comprehensive.
I have been watching this subject extremely closely and involved in a lot of planning - but I have to say that the majority of the government's preparations have been passive - i.e. shared with everyone who bothers to try to find out about it. Have the small holdings been engaged yet?
I would like to hear from anyone that knows the definitive answer to that, as it is the small holdings that are likely to provide the stepping stones that the virus needs to become widespread.
I am scared by the comments about the work gangs going from farm to farm! Actually better than wildfowl in terms of spreading this virus.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By J Knight Tabs,
Re the catching gangs, when I say my mate 'rears chickens for a living' I should clarify and say that he's a poultry farmer on a relatively large scale, and my comments are based on a conversation I had with him on Saturday night at the local running club awards dinner. He's not yet in despair with all this, but he's pretty worried,
John
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By AHS
Firstly the current science says that if vaccinate or destroy just domestic poultry the Flu risk to humans becomes negligible.
Secondly as the quarantine method failed abysmally with foot and mouth would you rather kill and burn/dispose of millions of birds or simply vaccinate them for a similar price. Thirdly the cost of a human pandemic will be considerably more than a couple of quid for each domestic bird.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By John Murgatroyd Bearing in mind the failure rate of vaccination (ie: the fact that not all those vaccinated gain immunity) I think the wholesale slaughter was correct. Over 2000 died from influenze in 2002/2003....so they say...(probably most of those caught it on a bus or train !)
In any case...to return to my earlier point...it isn't low or no resource that is the problem, it is failure to monitor and manage that resource.
It is also failure to enforce the hospital regulations, ie: ONLY TWO VISITORS PER BED, DON'T SIT ON THE BED, DO NOT TOUCH THE PATIENT) You have a well-run establishment, and ruin it by allowing people infested with fungi, bacteria and virus to have free rein to wander about infecting people !
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By AHS Vaccinations broadly speaking are 99 percent effective thats how we eradicated diseases like Smallpox and TB.
Although due to a cut back in supplying vaccines of the latter(TB)is now back and will cost society more in the long run.
Politicians are taking a big risk with 60 million people if Avian Flu mutates.
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By John Murgatroyd Quite. So, 99% of 100,000 birds is 99,000....hmmm. HN51 mutates so rapidly that the chance of a vaccine being effective against are quite small. Just to really screw things up, the drug treatment to prevent infection or reduce the effect of the disease, Tamiflu, has recently been given to infected birds in China...thereby increasing the chances of the virus becoming resistant to its effects...and to REALLY make things bad....the bad effects are due to the bodies immune systems dramatic over-reaction....and it is worse with young healthy people...fortunately, human to human infection is rare. So, to precis: Bird vaccination is not of much use because the virus is a fast mutating one. Drug treatment of the birds is of no use, because of the chances of resistance. The virus doesn't kill you, your own body does that. And it does it better, with H5N1, if you are young. Current forecasts of death rates in a world-wide pandemic (if the virus mutates into one where human to human infection easily occurs and it doesn't become less virulent when it does so) are between 20-100 million. The good news: I'm ok for a vaccination when they arrive !
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Peter Leese Just to provide an indication of running a business like this, ask yourself, how much is a ready roasted chicken at one of the larger supermarkets, and then immediately reduce the price by at least 50% to cover their margins. After that take away poultry accomodation, fuel, food, employees wages, repairs, finance costs, slaughter, packaging, transport, middleman and a host of other costs.
Where's the teapot mother?
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Jason911 I didn't think there were any recorded cases on human to human infection?
Jay
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By J Knight Peter,
Quite true, last night I bought four Chicken breasts to make Moroccan Lemon Chicken for our guests tonight. Because I'm an old softy and a recently revised vegetarian, I bought happy chicken meat, specifically two from Free Range, and two from Organic Chickens. The price differential over 'ordinary' pile-em-high sell-em-cheap Chicken was quite staggering, something in the region of 200% (free-range) to 250% (organic). Now, some of that will be because supermarkets know they can rip off sentimental sops like me, but some of it will be a reflection of the much higher costs of production involved in rearing birds in anything other than the most brutal conditions allowed by law; just the conditions which encourage wildfire spread of disease,
John
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By Tabs Jason, there is evidence that suggests a small cluster of human to human (in Indonesia), but epidemiology relies largely on memory and hearsay - usually from survivors.
To be a genuine threat of pandemic status, the virus needs to mutate to a strain that is very successful at such human to human transmission.
I hope it doesn't happen.
(Tamiflu to chickens? Really?)
|
|
|
|
Rank: Guest
|
Posted By J Knight Dunno about Tamiflu to Chickens, though it wouldn't surprise me, but I read on another forum that the H5N1 strain in Egypt is Tamiflu resistant already, so don't worry about people feeding it to chickens.....
John
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum.
You cannot reply to topics in this forum.
You cannot delete your posts in this forum.
You cannot edit your posts in this forum.
You cannot create polls in this forum.
You cannot vote in polls in this forum.