Banele Ginidza

The current outbreak of the Asian Influenza virus in poultry may mutate to humans as has been the case in the US with 70 cases reported and one fatality.

This was a warning from a microbiologist on Tuesday as the South African government is accused of dithering on a comprehensive poultry vaccination and bio-security drive rather than culling, which was unstainable without compensation.

Industry experts said on Tuesday the poultry industry has suffered losses estimated at R1.8 billion due to the culling and associated disruptions.

Major poultry producers like Astral Foods have reported significant financial losses, with operating losses reaching R621 million.

The outbreak has also hiked prices of eggs, which surged by 19% between September and October 2023 alone, reflecting supply shortages caused by the Avian Influenza outbreaks.

At a webinar hosted by Fairplay Movement to look at the economic and health risks of the next Avian Influenza outbreak in South Africa, Prof. Robert Bragg, a renowned expert in microbiology, said it was the more likely that people working with these birds were going to pick up the virus.

Bragg was discussing the concept of antigenic shift in antigenic drift in influenza and how this can impact the situation. He said the more people who pick up the virus, the bigger the chance that the country was going to enter into a pandemic scenario.

"But this is not only in South Africa this is across the world. I'm particularly concerned about the 1 000 dairy herds in the US. That are infected. So we're sitting on the edge of a precipice, influenza remains. There's about a thousand dairy farms in the US that are positive for avian influenza," Bragg said.

"The next step is, it's got to spread to humans. And this is this, it already has done as well. There's about 70 cases of humans so far, and one fatality where it becomes a problem.

"If this virus in humans develops to rapid human-to-human transmission and it spreads, and it's an airborne virus, then we're dealing with a major major pandemic. And if the mortality rate is high, we've got a big problem on our hands."

Dr. Shahn Bisschop, a veterinarian with extensive experience in animal health, said there was a wide variety of very effective vaccines available.

Bisschop said a number of these vaccines have already been registered in South Africa for use, but were prohibited.

"Simply because we cannot meet government's criteria for actually using them on our farms, which boils down to, as you said, by security, criteria, a variety of monitoring criteria," Bisschop said.

"So no one has even been able to attempt vaccination on an experimental level to see what the impact would be."

Izaak Breitenbach, CEO for the South African Poultry Association, said the recurrence of the virus in 2017, 2021, 2023 meant it had become a problem not an event.

"When we talk about the outbreak in 2023, we add R9.5bn to the cost structure of the industry that's material, and that is then given through to the consumer, which is not what we would like to do," Breitenbach said.

"We need to prevent having this disease. America has culled R150 million birds. They certainly don't have the disease under control. It's still spreading. We have Europe with a similar scenario. And then we ignore all the other countries, India, Argentina that also are suffering with avian influenza."

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Poultry's Avian Flu may mutate to humans as government dithers on biosecurity, experts warn