Half of the free-range poultry grown for Christmas in the UK have died or been culled because of the bird flu epidemic, an industry leader has told MPs.
The British Poultry Council chief executive, Richard Griffiths, told the environment, food and rural affairs committee on Tuesday that free-range poultry had been hit “very, very hard”.
About 600,000 of the usual 1.2 million to 1.3 million free-range turkeys and geese grown for Christmas had already been “directly affected” by the disease. And of the total 8.5 million to 9 million turkeys produced each year for the festive period, Griffiths said about 1.6 million had already died of the disease or been culled.
The highly infectious bird flu, which has been affecting Britain for more than a year and has gained pace in recent weeks, is deadly for farmed animals, such as turkeys and geese.
However, Britain’s worst bird flu outbreak has also meant any remaining birds on an affected farm have to be culled.
Asked what the devastation in the poultry sector would mean for the cost of turkeys in the shops, Griffiths said: “I don’t know, and that’s really a question for retailers at this point. We don’t know how the gaps within retail are going to be filled.”
Paul Kelly, of Essex-based Kelly Turkeys, told MPs there would be “big, big shortages” of free-range turkeys on the shelves.
However, the farmer said he didn’t anticipate a rise in prices: “I think it will just be a supply issue rather than the prices being hiked.”
There have been 136 confirmed cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 in the UK since the start of October, the vast majority of which have been in England, although the disease has now reached all nations.
Griffiths said that in previous outbreaks the number of cases had only tended to reach double figures.
More than a third (36%) of poultry farms had been affected by some form of control designed to curb the spread of bird flu, whether they had been directly affected by the disease or not, Griffiths told the committee.
Kelly told MPs his business had already faced three outbreaks, which had caused him to lose £1.2m.
“For farmers it has been devastating,” Kelly said, calling for an overhaul of the compensation scheme.
Farmers are only compensated for the number of fit and healthy animals when the authorities arrive to cull the remaining birds. However, poultry producers report entire flocks are succumbing to the illness before a cull can begin.
“The challenge for lot of smaller seasonal producers that produce Christmas poultry, they have their flock on their farm and when it is infected, those turkeys will die within four days,” Kelly said.
Poultry producers are calling for the development of a bird-flu vaccine to be accelerated amid warnings that many of those affected are questioning whether to continue rearing turkeys.
It comes after the British Free Range Egg Producers Association said this month that shortages and rationing caused by bird flu were expected to last beyond Christmas. Tesco and Asda are among the supermarkets rationing eggs.
