It is “eerily silent” on Steve Childerhouse’s poultry farm near Attleborough in Norfolk. At this time of year, he’d usually be working flat out, feeding his turkeys and geese for the busy Christmas period. But this year the sheds are empty, after avian influenza hit his farm in late September, wiping out all of his 11,000 free-range turkeys and 2,500 geese destined for local festive dinner tables.
In one fell swoop, a bird flu outbreak has devastated the 51-year-old’s livelihood. After almost 40 years – he started raising geese as a boy – Childerhouse is still coming to terms with the loss.
“I wouldn’t wish it on anybody,” he says, recalling how quickly the infection spread through his flock. He believes the disease was brought to his farm by wild birds, who initially passed it on to his geese.
The highly infectious bird flu that has been sweeping across Britain for more than a year now, and gained pace in recent weeks, is deadly for farmed animals such as turkeys and geese. However, any outbreak is also catastrophic for the farmers, as any remaining birds on the site have to be culled. At present the disease doesn’t pass easily from birds to humans.
“I’ve never seen anything like it and I don’t want to see it ever again,” Childerhouse says. “We had taken these birds from day-old chicks.”
He is reeling not just from the financial hit, but from the “emotional rollercoaster” of dealing with bird flu, which he likens to grief.
After the cull, he had to inform all the local butchers and farm shops that usually sell his birds, and warn all of his regular workers that he would not be able to offer them much-needed seasonal jobs this year.
Childerhouse has already decided he won’t go back into rearing geese, and in the meantime is looking for work elsewhere.
The UK’s worst-ever outbreak of bird flu has prompted fears about the availability of British turkeys and geese this Christmas.
The newly appointed farming minister, Mark Spencer, told the Observer it would be “quite a challenge” for consumers to get hold of a British goose “because there’s been such devastation in the sector”. He insisted, however, that there should be enough turkeys to go around, thanks to robust supply chains.
Nearly 9 million turkeys are eaten in the UK each Christmas, of which about 90% are British, according to the British Poultry Council. The sector relies on seasonal supply to rear, slaughter and process birds in time for all of those festive meals.
The industry body says the free-range sector has taken the biggest hit from bird flu, with about 35% of producers – which between them rear more than a million birds each year – directly affected.
There have been 100 confirmed cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 in England since the start of October. The outbreak has now been running for more than a year, since October 2021, and in that time there have been more than 230 cases.
It has led, so far, to the culling of 3.5m birds on UK farms and piled pressure on Britain’s egg producers, at a time when soaring energy and feed costs are causing many to leave the sector.
Bird flu cases usually drop during the summer months, but that did not happen this year. The disease has been most acute in East Anglia, especially Childerhouse’s home county of Norfolk. It is currently spreading northwards and westwards, with several confirmed cases in Lincolnshire, Cheshire and North Yorkshire, and also north Wales and Anglesey.
This wave of avian influenza is also spreading around Europe. Experts suspect the illness is now endemic in wild birds, creating a year-round risk of infection.
There is as yet no available vaccine against bird flu. At the end of last month, among other measures, the government ordered that all poultry and other captive birds in England be housed indoors. This was an extension of the housing order that had been in place in Norfolk, Suffolk and parts of Essex since mid-October.
However, many in the poultry industry believe this move came too late. They had been calling for several weeks for a nationwide poultry housing order after an upsurge in outbreaks. More cases on farms are expected as more migratory birds return to the UK for winter.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said it had announced “a package of support including quicker compensation packages, as well as stepping up biosecurity rules to minimise the risk of the disease spreading”.
The package also included a change to the rules of the bird flu compensation scheme available to farmers: they are now eligible for compensation payments from the start, rather than the end, of a planned culling. And in a move designed to give them more certainty over business planning, poultry farmers are now allowed to slaughter their animals early and freeze them, so the birds can be defrosted and sold to consumers in the run-up to Christmas, labelled “previously frozen”.
Third-generation turkey farmer Paul Kelly has already started processing some of his birds, several weeks earlier than usual, to dodge rising bird flu cases.
“It’s the Covid of poultry, except that turkeys and other poultry don’t get sick and recover; they just die,” he says from his farm in Essex. “I can honestly say this is the worst year I have had to deal with in my entire business career.”
Kelly calls the government’s compensation scheme “not fit for purpose”. He lost 9,000 of his 65,000 Christmas turkeys after an outbreak of bird flu at one of his sites, although his premium KellyBronze birds were not affected.
Unlike other livestock, under current legislation farmers are only compensated for the number of birds that are fit and healthy at the start of a bird flu cull.
“Our industry is saying this is many years out of date and isn’t fit for purpose,” Kelly says. Hundreds of birds can succumb to the illness between the farm notifying the authorities of an outbreak, and officials arriving to start the cull.
Poultry is an “unsupported sector” according to Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union. She warns that, with bird flu coming on top of 30% cost price inflation, farmers are struggling.
“We’ve got to make sure that we do not lose the critical mass of poultry producers, for eggs and meat,” Batters adds. “We’ve got to take special action. We have severe market failure on the back of a disease. The compensation package has to be enough to give farmers the confidence to keep producing, because they are also facing inflationary costs.”
Howard Blackwell is another Essex turkey farmer who finds himself literally and figuratively at a loss after a bird flu outbreak among his flock of 5,500 turkeys and 1,800 geese in early October.
The 59-year-old introduced turkeys to the arable farm set up by his grandparents at Coggeshall, near Braintree, in 1983, as an extra source of income. But he estimates that he will have lost nearly £200,000 as a result of the outbreak, and is currently unclear how much compensation he will receive. His farm shop and wholesale meat business have been allowed to continue operating, but under stringent restrictions.
Bird flu is not a one-season worry for Blackwell and other affected farmers. The complex and costly clean-up operation required after an outbreak, which can include a legally enforced 12-month delay in restocking with birds, means he is not sure whether he will even be allowed to rear poultry next year.
Until there is a bird flu vaccine, Blackwell is fearful for the future.
“It’s like Russian roulette. If you haven’t got a vaccine, you could restock and it could happen again.”
