South Africa’s first bird flu vaccinations are a test at one chicken farm to help poultry producers and the government learn how the process works in practice.
This was explained by Gary Arnold, CEO of Astral Foods, the country’s largest poultry producer, in a radio interview with Landbouweekblad.
Arnold said the process was subject to multiple rules and procedures and “this is a learning curve for all of us”. Astral and the government had agreed to a test project at one site to “get one blueprint application in place against which we can tick all the boxes”.
The administrative burden of the vaccination procedure was “strict, onerous and costly”, but the cost was negligible compared to the cost of having bird flu and cullings wiping out whole chicken flocks he said.
In 2023, bird flu had cost Astral more than R400 million, but at the time they had insurance cover against the disease. Since then, as bird flu hit poultry producers around the world, obtaining insurance cover had become difficult, if not impossible.
The cost of vaccinating chickens was calculated at between R2 and R2.50 per bird, which was more or less equal to the insurance premium Astral would have paid had cover been available.
Asked whether vaccination costs would raise chicken prices, he said that on the contrary it could contribute to keeping them lower, because vaccination was cheaper than the cost of importing hatching eggs and replacing flocks destroyed by bird flu.
Arnold stressed that it was only breeding stock, not chickens raised for meat production, that were being vaccinated. The protection of breeding stock was essential if producers were to recover from a bird flu outbreak, he said.
“The strategy is to vaccinate the breeding stock, and if we can cover that risk, we can ensure the supply of broilers and broiler meat into the market. That goes a long way to ensuring food security in the country,” he said.
Astral did not plan to vaccinate all of its chicken flocks, but was considering extending the programme to other high-risk poultry sites.
Arnold also stressed that vaccination posed no risk to consumers, and that chicken meat was “completely safe”. The vaccines contained no live virus, and there was no trace of the vaccines in the eggs or chicken meat in retail stores.
“Vaccination poses no risk to human health, and no risk to birds’ health. It merely assists the birds in developing immunity (to bird flu)”, he stated.
