Astral Foods, South Africa’s largest poultry producer, has just reported the first annual loss in its history because of extraordinary costs associated with power cuts and bird flu-related mass cullings.
Bird flu remains a major risk to the local poultry industry, which “will see mutations of strains coming every year”, Schutte told the Sunday Times.
With Europe at the start of winter, there were signs of high infection rates there and migratory birds travel to Africa, spreading the disease.
“Bird flu will be with us for quite a long time. We believe that as a small country at the bottom of Africa, the only possibility to protect our supply is with vaccination,” said Schutte.
Progress is being made towards approvals for voluntary vaccination of broiler breeding stock, he said.
Suggestions that bird flu is under control are incorrect, said Schutte. “How do you control an airborne virus? The infection rate has slowed down because there are no chickens left.”
Unlike in other countries, the government is not compensating poultry producers for culling livestock as a disease-control measure, he said. Globally, authorities usually take control of an outbreak, set up quarantine and surveillance zones, cull the affected flocks, safely dispose of the birds and then compensate producers.
On whether producers can claim from insurance to recoup losses, Schutte said: “It is highly doubtful insurance cover for this risk will be made available.”
