Feather boards advise farmers to take precautions if visiting board offices

Thursday, April 30, 2015

by SUSAN MANN

Ontario’s chicken, turkey, egg and broiler hatching egg boards have installed heightened biosecurity procedures for their board offices for the first time ever in response to the avian influenza outbreak in Oxford County.

“This is a precautionary move because it’s better to be safe than sorry,” notes Egg Farmers of Ontario general manager Harry Pelissero.

The Feather Board Command Centre issued the recommended biosecurity procedures for the feather board offices last week. The command centre is the poultry industry’s disease management organization.

In its advisory notice, the command centre advises all poultry farmers to not visit their board offices during this time of enhanced biosecurity and “avoid unnecessary contact with other poultry producers especially at group meetings.” It also recommends board members and other industry representatives conduct their business from home over the phone or by conference call or email. Hard copies of documents can be mailed to the board offices.

Egg Farmers of Ontario “just did a board conference call from 12 to 12:30 p.m. (May 1),” Pelissero notes.

If farmers have to visit their board office, they need to follow certain procedures. Some of those include calling ahead and making an appointment, showering, changing out of their barn clothes and footwear and washing their vehicle as soon as possible after leaving the farm and while on route to the board office.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has confirmed the deadly H5N2 avian influenza virus on two turkey farms and a chicken broiler-breeding operation, all in Oxford County. All of the more than 70,000 infected birds in total on the three premises have been euthanized and the farms are in varying stages of composting the dead birds.

CFIA has also set up two avian influenza control zones and quarantined all poultry farms in those areas. One is near Woodstock, while the other in the county also spans a portion of Waterloo County. More than 50 provincial poultry farms are under quarantine and can only move poultry and equipment on and off their farms with CFIA-issued permits.

Pelissero says the heightened biosecurity procedures have no impact on the boards’ office staff. But “all the feather boards have held field inspectors out of the field across Ontario for the last four or five weeks.”

Another advisory issued last week is from the provincial agriculture ministry and it deals with enhanced biosecurity for people working with wild birds, wild bird habitats and domestic poultry.

The Poultry Industry Council has also postponed a number of poultry-related educational events. They include the annual Research Day scheduled for May 6, the Poultry Health Day (also co-sponsored by Zoetis) scheduled for June 18 in Stratford and the Poultry Welfare Auditor Course scheduled for May 26 to 28 in Woodstock. All events will be rescheduled for later in the year.  BF