Poultry plague threatens your Christmas dinner… for next two years!
As experts warn free-range turkeys and geese will be in short supply until 2024 because of bird flu, JAMES MURRAY talks to farming families battling to survive
IF YOU’RE lucky enough to be able to enjoy a free-range turkey this year, savour your Christmas dinner because it could become a rare treat. To date, a staggering 5.5 million UK chickens, turkeys and geese have been culled, 2.3 million in the past month alone, as avian flu (H5N1) cuts a swathe across the country.
The latest and worst-yet outbreak of the influenza epidemic is piling pressure on small poultry producers already facing rising energy bills and the cost-of-living crisis.
It has become a seasonal problem, arriving in the autumn as waterfowl and wading birds fly into Britain from Europe and the Arctic.
Draconian government rules mean farms cannot reopen for six months, and then only after a level of cleaning many say is financially beyond them.
Farmers must otherwise keep their premises shut for 12 months and that will affect supplies of birds next Christmas.
Prices this year have already been affected, with The Grocer magazine reporting they have soared to a third more than last year because of shortages. A Waitrose medium turkey crown is £25 – a third more than in 2021.
In a cruel twist, smaller producers choosing to give their birds a better life using free-range farming methods are under greater threat than big producers who house turkeys in huge sheds.
Tough new restrictions on farmed poultry and captive birds were introduced yesterday in an attempt to limit the crisis, with all birds kept indoors.
Down at Blackwells poultry farm at Coggeshall, near Colchester in Essex, Howard Blackwell had been putting the finishing touches to a brochure celebrating the 40th anniversary of his geese and turkey business when the disease struck.
Mr Blackwell started the firm aged 21 and it is very much a family affair with his wife Jane, sons George, 33, and Tom, 22, and daughter Laura, 30, all contributing to building a brand which has won a string of prestigious awards, including the best farm shop in Essex.
But early last month everything was threatened when he noticed six dead birds among the 3,200 turkeys happily clucking away. That night he slept a little uneasily, trying to convince himself they hadn’t been infected with avian influenza. However, with 23 more dead birds the next morning, he sent four to his vet in Norfolk to be analysed and his fears were confirmed. The poultry plague had arrived. Two days later 500 birds were dead and, when the government vets arrived the day after, it was a massacre.
“It took three of us two hours to wheelbarrow all the dead ones out of the shed,” Mr Blackwell recalls. “We must have taken out a thousand dead birds in those two hours. By the time the vet had arrived there were only about 700 live birds left out of more than 3,000. It was harrowing, devastating, especially as they had been in excellent condition for Christmas just a few days earlier. In a few days they’d been decimated.” While he was trying to cope with the emotional fallout, Mr Blackwell was also trying to work out what he stands to lose financially – about £200,000, as 300 of his 1,800 geese had also succumbed and all would eventually die.
“I’d had all the brochures printed to celebrate my 40th year poultry farming and suddenly we had no birds, geese or turkeys,” he says. “I could hardly sleep with worry but I knew I had to do everything I could to protect the business.”
UNLIKE many producers, the Blackwells have a slender profit margin. Profits from Christmas turkeys and geese in previous years have been ploughed into two other family businesses, a farm shop and a meat supply business selling to top London restaurants.
But even that has been hanging by a thread. The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), an executive agency of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, asked Mr Blackwell to close his shop and shut everything down, but he was not
‘It took three of us two hours to wheelbarrow all the dead birds out of the shed’
prepared to go under without a fight. “I have more than 40 people working for me. When the vet with APHA told me to stop everything I refused,” he says.
“It was bad enough losing all my turkeys and geese. She told me I had two choices: to open or close the shop. She said, ‘If you keep it open, I’ll report you to trading standards and they will close it down and you will have a criminal record’.
“The argument got quite aggressive. But I sell all sorts of other meat apart from poultry through the shop and that meat is unaffected by avian flu. There was no logic to shutting the shop.”
Despite the threat of prosecution, he stuck to his guns and kept the shop open – which the vet finally allowed even though he is inside a bird flu zone.
“They are treating the area like Chernobyl, which is ridiculous,” he adds.
“This disease is in wild birds. Swans, ducks and geese on rivers and lakes are dying and there is nothing to stop the public walking by those rivers and lakes.There are no foot dips for people to get in their cars.
“The Government has encouraged us to diversify, so that’s partly why I started the shop and butchery, two separate businesses aside from the geese and turkeys. I am more fortunate and resilient than other small poultry producers because I have other businesses, so I will survive. But it is not easy.” For now he will shut his turkey and geese businesses for 12 months.
“There is no science to say why the sheds have to be empty for a year but those are the rules,” he adds.
“There is an option to go for a big clean and begin again in a few months but the wash down they are proposing would be far too costly. The virus has gone from here. Pheasants, partridges, doves and pigeons have found their way into the sheds looking for food and they are not dying.
“There are no dead birds. I think closing for six months would be far more sensible – at least that would give us time to restock turkeys and geese for next year.”
Farmers are only paid compensation when healthy birds are culled – not for sick or dead birds. “When cattle farmers were hit with foot and mouth disease they were compensated for all animals which had died or been culled,” adds Mr Blackwell.
“Why is it so different for poultry farmers?” It is estimated the country’s biggest-ever avian flu epidemic has killed 5.5 million birds so far this year, with 35 percent of the free range poultry market culled.
Normally, 250,000 geese are eaten over the festive period but Farming Minister Mark Spencer admits trying to get a goose this year for Christmas will be “quite a challenge”.
Gressingham Foods, the main Suffolkbased supplier of geese, has been hit badly with infections.
Paul Kelly, chairman of the British Turkey Federation, is hopeful there will be enough turkeys for Christmas this year – Britain normally produces 15 million of the birds a year – but the long-term outlook is bleak unless ministers can drive through a vaccination programme.
Mr Kelly’s own turkeys, at his farm in Danbury, near Chelmsford, Essex, are currently safe but, at one contract farm he manages, more than 9,000 birds were lost.
“The risks are so high now, you are playing roulette,” he says. “Had I known back in March how bad the pandemic would be, my business would be very different. I would not have been doing a fraction of the number of turkeys I have.We managed a farm which lost 9,000 turkeys in three days. It started on the Thursday evening and they were all dead by Monday lunchtime. It is that quick.
“That gives you an idea of the speed of the disease. The problem is worse for the small, independent farmer, who only has one or two sheds. If he gets it, he loses the whole lot in a few days.”
Mr Kelly explains that the 12-month closure rule puts turkey producers out of business for two years. “We need to have a vaccine fast-tracked just as we did with Covid,” he adds. “In the absence of a vaccine and a compensation scheme which is fit for purpose, I don’t believe Christmas poultry producers will risk raising poultry next year when they could face the same situation.” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the Commons last week the country needs a vaccine “as soon as possible”.
To offset UK losses, it is expected potentially hundreds of thousands of turkeys will be imported from abroad.
However, European poultry farms have also been badly hit by the H5N1 virus with 48 million birds culled. The World Health Organisation for Animal Health estimates that globally 112 million birds, wild and kept, have died or were culled.
GLOBALLY there have been 864 cases of H5N1 infecting humans with 456 deaths since 2003. To reduce risk, the public is being urged to stay away from any dead birds they see in the wild. Defra introduced a mandatory measure earlier this year which meant all captive birds in Suffolk, Norfolk and parts of Essex had to be kept indoors.
This was extended nationwide yesterday. Chief veterinary officer Christine Middle-= miss said: “The risk of kept birds being exposed to disease has reached a point where it is necessary for all birds to be housed until further notice.
“Scrupulous biosecurity and separating flocks in all ways from wild birds remain the best form of defence.”
To help bird producers, farmers can kill and freeze their birds now before defrosting them and selling them as fresh poultry at Christmas. Andrew Goodman, who farms 6,000 turkeys and 4,000 geese at Goodmans Geese in Worcestershire, is confident traditional Christmas dinners can be saved.
“Luckily, we are in the middle of the country and not near large areas of water, so there is less chance of wildlife coming here,” he said. “But all it needs is one bit of faeces to fall from an infected bird and you have got an infection – we are all on tenterhooks.”
It’s not even December, but for poultry farmers it’s going to be a long Christmas as the poultry plague shows no signs of abating.
‘There is the option to go for a big clean and begin again in a few months... but it’s far too costly’