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Gobble Gobble
Yorkshire Post - 12
February 2007
Bird flu has struck again in Britain in dramatic fashion. Bernard Matthews is an iconic figure in the food industry – one of those huge personalities who stamp their identity on the public mind. Bernard’s “bootiful” turkeys have virtually created an entire sector of the food industry.
Some 160.000 turkey chicks have been gassed at the Matthews’ plant at Holton in Suffolk- and scientists are trying to unravel how the H5N1 virus got into the intensive breeding sheds.
The accusing finger is pointing firmly at Hungary. H5N1 hit geese farms in Hungary recently. Matthews has a turkey business in Hungary, and although it is about 160 miles away from the outbreak and well outside the restricted zone some transmission of infection is suspected. The fact that Matthews imported semi-processed meat from Hungary onto the site in Suffolk for final processing adds to the circumstantial evidence. Its onward transmission into the turkey sheds is put down to a failure of “bio-security” – a word which only entered the language in the wake of the foot and mouth epidemic.
In one sense only the emergence of the Hungary hypothesis is a relief. It indicates contamination from a distinct source centred in a single place. The record of containment of avian flu on a single site is good. In every other way it is a disaster because of the fear that infected meat has got into the food chain.
The danger here is not of huge swathes of the population becoming sick. Rather it is that people throw away bits of carcase, meat, and packaging (re-cycling may have its downside!) which is then scavenged by wild animals, especially birds, and transmitted to new sites.
It is easy enough for the Government to order breeders to keep their poultry away from contact with wild birds. The problem is that thousands of people keep a few hens which scratch around the garden and may not be able, or may simply be unaware of the need, to confine them.
The problem is particularly acute for breeders of free-range and organic birds because the very ability to maintain this designation depends on extensive rearing methods. The recent strong performance of supermarkets like Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose owes a great deal to the growth in sales of organic products as “lifestyle” issues and concerns about sustainability enter into consumer consciousness.
From the Government’s point of view outbreaks of animal disease bring four possible scenarios, ranging from the Dantesque to the quasi-routine. The nightmare is that of a spread to the human population – at worst provoking a “pandemic.” This does not simply mean lots of sick people: it means huge pressure on public services, especially health, if the work-force is struck with illness. In short, the dislocation of an entire economy and society.
Whitehall has said that it has sufficient reserves of vaccine to protect “front-line” workers. How governments cope with risk, and how they persuade an electorate that there is no such certainty as freedom of risk, is one of the conundrums of modern politics.
The next great fear is a huge animal epidemic. BSE and foot and mouth disease provoked apocalyptic images of a diseased and broken countryside – and vast amounts of spending on eradication.
The third fear is a public revolt against the food caught up in the problem leading to business failure and contraction and significant redundancy. The fourth, allied fear, is public revulsion at practices used in the rearing of livestock and manufacture of food, however legal and scientifically approved, which brings a questioning of the whole safety and ethical base of the industry.
There is a very substantial trade in part-processed food, encouraged, no doubt, by the fact that the laws on labelling say that a product which receives its final processing in the UK can be described as British. Britain is a very big importer of poultry, with Brazil growing in importance as a supplier. There are, inevitably, differences in practices authorised by regulatory authorities.
Britain’s poultry meat industry is worth some £3.4bn a year, of which Bernard Matthews accounts for some £400. Export markets are being shut off as national governments take precautionary measures. Both swine fever and foot and mouth viruses are believed to have come to the UK from abroad and the NFU is now asking the Government to control imports.
Europe has seen bird flu outbreaks in Belgium – where the sole human death has occurred- Holland, France, Greece, Hungary and Britain. here poultry is reared as part of a farming or industrial business. This has permitted the outbreaks to be stamped out ruthlessly and the disease contained.
In Asia birds are reared literally cheek by jowl with people – peasant farming in fact. The contact between people, poultry and wild birds is so intimate that there is always the fear that flu could erupt at any moment. It is believed that 164 people have died in Asia – all of them from intensive handling of the birds not from eating their meat.
The danger now is that the threat could be growing. There is evidence of avian flu in West Africa which is astride bird migration routes to Europe. The Government can give guarantees of vigilance; it can demonstrate preparedness; it can test its response plans to destruction; it can preach bio-security with evangelical fervour.
And then it is watch and pray.
© Yorkshire Post
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