Your Say

22/02/2006
No to bird flu vaccine

The use of poultry vaccines to guard against the spread of H5N1 bird flu will inflict huge costs on poultry farmers, cause undue distress to poultry and, owing to the difficulties of catching free-range poultry, may not act as a blanket solution, Jonathan Evans Conservative MEP for Wales, has said.

Mr Evans argued that the practicalities of vaccinating poultry such as catching them and injecting them will make any vaccination plans unworkable.

Conservative MEPs were instrumental in setting in place the EU monitoring and contingency plans now being enacted in the member states that have been affected. These proposals argued that vaccination would only be effective if EU laboratories could develop a low-cost, multi-strain vaccine that can be administered orally in the poultry's water or sprayed.

Mr Evans said DEFRA should turn its immediate attention to putting in place a number of 'quick hit' solutions that can be enacted after the first case of H5N1 is found. These include clear, consistent information for farmers pointing out their obligations to monitor, isolate and destroy infected poultry; coherent plans to move poultry indoors straight away if necessary; and a full ban on exotic bird imports.

He said: "DEFRA must not allow itself to be caught unaware like with the Foot and Mouth outbreak in 2001. The good news is we're finding the infected birds across Europe so our monitoring systems are working. What farmers need now is clear, consistent information setting out their responsibilities and reassurance the government is taking action to ensure the disease does not spread.

"The use of an injected poultry vaccine is frankly unrealistic. For it to work, every chicken would have to be injected twice in its lifetime and anybody who has tried catching free range chickens will know trapping them is almost impossible for the farmer and very distressing for the poultry.

"What the European Union and the British government should be focusing on is the development of a cost-effect vaccine that can be easily sprayed or placed in their water. If we can develop that, we can keep the disease out of birds which will keep it out of humans."

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