The wild ducks did it

Just imagine going to work on your egg farm one morning with everything completely normal and then by nightfall having your entire operation quarantined, 400,000 chooks having to be culled and the 3 million eggs in your warehouse destroyed.

Essentially this is what has happened to the Langfield Pastoral Company (LPC), which owns the Bendick Murrell (in NSW) facility that has been virtually wiped out by an outbreak of H7 avian influenza.

It is assumed that the free-range chooks came into contact with wild ducks, who are known carriers of the H7 virus. Apparently at any time around 1% of migratory wild ducks are actively infected and the disease is highly infectious - however, it does not affect humans.

Now Woolworths has just announced that by 2018 it intends to cease selling any battery hen eggs - one assumes this means they will be selling free-range eggs in lieu. Disregarding all the current discussions about what space is needed per chook for eggs to be genuinely ‘free range’ one has to assume that all free-range chooks will have some access to the great outdoors. This means contact with wild ducks will be much easier. So does this mean that the devastation facing LPC will be more likely for all egg farms?

If the probability of avian flu epidemics is increased significantly because of the farming conditions the insurance for disasters will also increase substantially, further increasing the cost of the humble egg.

LPC is facing collapse - yet the company did nothing wrong. In fact, it did things correctly. It contacted the authorities as soon as it suspected a problem. A 10 km radius exclusion zone has been established around the farm and its 400,000 chooks and 3 million eggs are being destroyed. The wild ducks have an awful lot to answer for - but that won’t bring back a viable, thriving business will it?