More than 1.8 million birds were killed in a quest to rid the nation of the disease after Victoria, NSW and the ACT experienced outbreaks last year.
But each instance has been carefully eradicated and with no new detections since July, the Federal Government has announced Australia is officially free from H7 avian influenza.
For Victorian egg farmer Danyel Cucinotta, whose farm was spared the brunt of the outbreak while her fellow farmers weren’t so lucky, the announcement is a positive development.
“However, relief is hardly where we’re at,” Ms Cucinotta said.
The former VFF vice-president praised the powerhouse effort to eliminate the strain in Australia but said the industry, the government and the entire supply chain were exhausted from the process.
“If another disease outbreak happens, I don’t know how we'll go, in the sense that we, as human resources are exhausted,” she said.
“The whole process of disposal, clean up, eradication — that takes people, it takes time, it takes extensive amounts of money, and I’m also certain we are well over the initial budget in the clean up.”
With supermarket-supplying farms now free of the disease, they can start growing birds again, VFF Egg Group president Meg Parkinson said.
“The challenge is getting everything up and running,” she said.
“They grow on and then it takes the birds about six months to start laying.”
Egg prices aren’t expected to drop either, with the industry expected to pay 20 per cent of the clean up, forcing farmers to pass on costs to consumers.
“We, as the egg industry, have not even paid off the avian influenza outbreak of 2020 so we’re now going to put on another levy on top,” Ms Cucinotta said.
“It’s tens-of-millions of dollars.”
Production may return to normal levels in spring, if there’s not another outbreak, and customers should shop around at smaller retailers where supply remains abundant, Ms Cucinotta said.
Australian Chicken Meat Federation chief executive Mary Wu said the flu strain’s destruction is critical to the country’s ability to maintain food security.
“Overall, chicken meat has not been impacted to any great extent by the H7 avian influenza due to our rigorous industry biosecurity practices, supported by the national disease eradication program,” she said.
Federal Agriculture Minister Julie Collins labelled the eradication as something every Australian should be proud of.
“It demonstrates that governments and industry are really switched on to the risks and will act quickly to respond to emergency animal disease outbreaks,” she said.
Over the past 50 years, Australia has successfully contained and eradicated H7 bird flu multiple times, but there remains a threat of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain which has devastated animal populations overseas.
It is not yet present in Australia, but is proliferating due to the migration patterns of wild birds, leading to the Federal Government investing more than $100 million to bolster national preparedness and responses.
The World Health Organisation says the deadly H5N1 strain rarely affects humans and is not easily transferred between people.
– with AAP.
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