In a matter of weeks – or even days – the UK’s free-range chicken sector is expected to be shut down. Any farms that had been giving their egg-laying hens or chickens access to the outdoors will be forced to keep them locked indoors.
While the headlines are that bird flu is back after a surge of outbreaks over the past three weeks and fears of festive goose shortages, the reality is it never really went away.
In the past, cases dropped in the summer months; this year they continued, with 3.5 million birds culled on UK farms. Hundreds of thousands of seabirds are also believed to have died from the disease.
Experts suspect avian flu is now endemic in wild birds, creating a risk of infection all year round, and has a greater ability to persist in the environment.
Avian flu can be spread through infected body fluids and faeces, or via contaminated feed, bedding and water – and even vehicles, clothing and footwear. Some experts have also pointed to the movement of birds or material between poultry farms as a source of infection.
Any outbreak is devastating for a poultry farmer, with the enforced culling of any remaining birds in the flock, followed by clean-up costs and legally enforced delays on restocking.
But for free-range egg and meat producers – who sell their products on the premise that their birds have access to the outdoors for at least part of their lives – a mandatory housing order is potentially terminal.
The last UK-wide housing order for anyone keeping birds – whether back yard or commercial keepers – was only lifted in May having been agreed and put in place by the chief veterinary officers for Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland last November. This year, a number of regional housing orders were issued in October.
“The product that we’re selling is that our animals go outside,” said Somerset farmer Oliver White, who raises free-ranging chickens, turkeys and geese. “We market them as pasture-raised, so we wouldn’t want to dilute our ethos or story [by raising them indoors].”
White’s farm is outside the mandatory housing order that currently applies only to Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. He says he is in a race against time – fearing both an avian flu outbreak and the expected UK-wide housing order – to get his last birds ready for slaughter for the festive market.
“I just can’t wait to get the birds into the freezer. If we got a case of avian influenza it would wipe out our Christmas stocks and therefore our Christmas income. Once they’re in the freezer, they’re safe,” he said.
Suffolk egg producer Daniel Brown, already under a regional housing order, is not so fortunate. He keeps 44,000 free-range hens, laying between 35,000 and 40,000 eggs every day that are sold to a wholesaler before going on to retailers. “The birds are all back inside,” he said.
According to industry regulations, the housing conditions for free-range hens are no different from the regulations for hens kept in barn systems [where birds have no access to the outdoors], with a maximum stocking density of nine hens for each square metre of usable area.
Brown says the public probably wouldn’t mind his birds being indoors in the colder winter months and that he has brought in extra enrichment for them while indoors, including hay bales and grit. But he worries about a housing order extending to May, as it did this year, or longer.
“I don’t know what it means for the business long-term. Everyone thought this flu would burn out over the summer, but it’s still here. I keep free-range hens because I like keeping them outdoors. I don’t want to be shutting them inside.”
The government chief vet, Christine Middlemiss, said this week that she had concerns about whether some housing in the free-range sector was fit for purpose for longer periods. Animal welfare campaigners said it was “untenable to keep birds living in their night-time accommodation” with less opportunity to move and escape outdoors if frightened.
After two decades of growth, the UK’s free-range flock has grown into the biggest in Europe. Free-range eggs have more than doubled their share of the retail market since 2004, accounting for 74% of all eggs sold by retailers today.
But with a second consecutive year of mandatory housing orders, White says he fears that free-ranging birds over the winter may no longer be feasible.
“The supermarkets have driven this assumption that everyone should be able to get everything all year round. And that applies to free-range chicken and eggs too. But that has created a greater risk for avian flu outbreaks and hence why we have the need for a housing order,” he said.
Officially farmers can keep labelling their eggs as free-range for 16 weeks after a compulsory housing order is brought in. But after that date – as happened in March this year – the eggs have to be labelled as barn eggs.
In the Netherlands, which has also been hit hard by bird flu outbreaks, retailers committed to continuing to pay egg producers the surcharge for free-range eggs despite the birds being housed.
There has not yet been an explicit commitment from UK retailers to pay the free-range surcharge, but Andrew Opie, from the British Retail Consortium, said retailers “know it is important to have a sustainable free-range supply and will continue to support their farmers to help them through this period”.
Egg producers say retailers have already driven too much value out of the market, so could risk their supplies with a price cut. “I don’t think they’ll be able to get cheaper eggs if they force more UK producers to quit because of the low margins,” said Brown.
“They’d be crazy to price eggs from free-range flocks that have been incarcerated in barns at barn egg prices,” said David Hughes, emeritus professor of food marketing at Imperial College London. “The egg producers will be carrying all the free-range costs irrespective of whether the birds are ‘in or out’ and are in a rocky enough financial position as it is anyway as a result of egg input inflationary pressures.”
Mark Williams, chief executive at the British Egg Industry Council, said he expected that retailers would “continue to support the sector as they have done in the past”.
The industry is also hopeful that the UK will follow the EU’s proposed rule change to allow eggs to be labelled free-range even if the birds are permanently indoors for as long as a housing order remains in place.
Defra has, so far, refused to make that commitment, and has said it is “mindful of the need to maintain consumer confidence in the free-range brand long term”.
The other hope for next year is a vaccine, which Robert Gooch, CEO of the British Free Range Egg Producers Association, said would “solve the problem overnight”. There are already trials under way with ducks, chickens and turkeys in France, the Netherlands and Italy respectively.
The US and France, in particular, are said to be keen on getting an international agreement on the use of vaccinations and to prevent poultry-related trade embargos on countries who approve their use.
A near-record number of chickens and turkeys in the US have died over the past year from avian flu, while France has been the worst affected country in the EU with more than 1,300 outbreaks over the past year, compared with 190 outbreaks in the UK. A total of 47.7 million birds have been culled across the EU and a further 47 million in the US.
A vaccination would prevent birds from getting the disease and dying, as well as reducing virus secretion and presence in the environment, said Prof Munir Iqbal, head of avian influenza group at the Royal Veterinary College. However, in some cases these birds could still be infectious to other birds, he added.
Iqbal said a global meeting to discuss the wider use of avian flu vaccinations that do not block the trade of poultry products (eggs and meat) was due to take place in Paris next week, hosted by the World Organisation for Animal Health.
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