South Africa is better prepared for the next bird flu outbreak in every respect except vaccination against the disease, according to Izaak Breitenbach of the SA Poultry Association.
Key takeaways:
- Red tape is stalling protection: Bureaucratic delays are holding back a crucial mass bird flu vaccination rollout in South Africa.
- Culling isn’t enough: Global strategies are shifting toward vaccination to reduce the virus load and prevent more catastrophic outbreaks, like the one in South Africa in 2023.
- Government support is crucial: The poultry industry is urging the new agriculture minister to simplify onerous regulations and subsidise the cost of vaccines for farmers.
Breitenbach said that, while vaccination was being looked at worldwide as an essential control measure, bureaucratic obstacles continued to delay a mass vaccination programme in South Africa.
The H5 bird flu strain that had spread worldwide was “a nightmare” to control, he told the Afrikaans language radio station AgriOrbit.
“It is not possible to eradicate the bird flu virus through mass culling,” he said.
“Most of the first world countries who do not vaccinate are now looking at starting a vaccination programme”.
Vaccination reduced the likelihood of poultry flocks becoming infected, and when multiple flocks were vaccinated, the virus load in the environment was reduced because vaccinated birds were not shedding the virus.
That would prevent a disastrous outbreak such as the one in 2023 that devastated South Africa’s poultry industry.
Breitenbach outlined two actions he hoped new agriculture minister Willie Aucamp would take to promote a mass vaccination campaign.
The first was to implement revised regulations for vaccination, to replace the “onerous” requirements that were holding up a vaccination programme. The new regulations had been prepared in response to complaints from the poultry industry, but not yet published.
The second was that the government would help poultry producers by subsidising or bearing the full cost of the vaccination, as it had done for beef producers in the national vaccination programme against foot and mouth disease.
“We want to incentivise as many farmers as possible to vaccinate, so we won’t have another mass outbreak such as we had in 2023,” Breitenbach said.
