Existing measures are unable to control the avian flu epidemic. Agriculture Minister Piet Adema is therefore studying new interventions that should provide protection, especially in the long term. This includes mapping risk areas where expanding poultry farms could become more difficult.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza has continued to circulate over the past year. Nearly 5 million chickens, ducks and turkeys have already been culled during this epidemic. The costs are already in the tens of millions of euros.
Adema wants poultry farmers to work out a plan together with veterinarians from next year to limit the risk of contamination on their farms as much as possible. Unorthodox measures, such as laser beams, are also being explored to keep out other potentially infected birds around farms.
The minister will assess whether the vaccines are feasible, available, functional and safe in order to speed up their introduction. In addition, the minister is in consultation with poultry farmers on the financial consequences of vaccines.
At the insistence of coalition party D66, the Ministry of Agriculture is working on guidelines for the management of sick and dead (wild) birds, where the virus is also often found. The same party also wants to make it more difficult to establish poultry farms in areas with a high risk of contamination.
Prevent expansion
When there is a clear overview of these risk areas, Adema wants to look at the possibilities of “preventing” settlement or expansion here, writes the minister in a letter to parliament. “At the moment, neither I nor the local authorities have the legal instruments at our disposal.”
Adema points out that zoonoses such as avian flu are also taken into account in the nitrogen approach. Last week it already announced a national confinement obligation due to the growing number of infections.
