Bird flu impacting 1 million birds in Ontario

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Avian flu outbreaks are a reality in Ontario, but as of last week, they had yet to infiltrate Chatham-Kent.

According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) seven commercial poultry locations in Southwestern Ontario have been affected by a highly contagious avian influenza since the middle of December.

Those seven outbreaks are in North Middlesex, Oxford County and Strathroy. All outbreaks are at commercial poultry operations, according to CFIA data, and impact more than one million birds.

Brad Snobelen, president of the Kent Federation of Agriculture, said the concern over bird flu is serious in Chatham-Kent.

“There are over a million hens in our area that produce over 29 million eggs each year with a farm gate value of $78 million annually,” he said. “As well, pullets for egg production, broiler chickens, broiler breeders, turkeys and ducks are vulnerable to avian influenza.”

Snobelen maintains that an area of particular worry is with backyard chickens, something the KFA opposed as the matter went before council. Chatham-Kent council in November opted for a two-year trial project for the backyard birds, allowing rural and village residents to raise up to 10 hens on their property.

“Research has shown that contamination of commercial flocks can originate from urban backyard chickens,” Snobelen said in his letter to council. “When AI is detected in a commercial flock, that flock must be euthanized, the facilities thoroughly cleaned and disinfected and a withdrawal period must be observed. The result is crippling to that farmer – the financial, mental and emotional stress that accompanies this situation can be devastating.”

He added that the first detection of bird flu in 2023 in Ontario occurred in a backyard cluster of hens right here in Chatham-Kent.

A British Columbia teen contracted the H5N1 avian flu strain in November and was hospitalized.

The virus also spread to dairy herds in the U.S.

Avian influenza reported in Southwestern Ontario are variations of the H5N1 bird flu that has been persisting in wild birds internationally for more than two years, said Scott Weese, an infectious diseases veterinarian and professor at Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph.

Weese said the virus is circulating “in wild birds fairly effectively and that means spillover risk of infection into domestic animals” such as poultry and mammals, “especially mammals that will catch and eat birds.”

There are 69 other active infected premises country-wide, although two in Quebec are reported to be a low pathogenic avian influenza strain, the agency says. All but six of the active cases are in British Columbia.

The virus poses “multiple levels of concern,” Weese said, such as the virus’s potential to “jump between species and adapt.

“It doesn’t spread very well person to person, or spread at all person to person,” Weese said of the virus, but warned it could be problematic if that changed, especially into a transmissible infection that humans haven’t encountered previously.

“If it changes and mixes to be something that’s adapted to spreading human to human, then it could be incredibly severe, an incredibly big problem,” Weese said.

  • With files from Brian Williams, Local Journalism Initiative reporter with the London Free Press.

 

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