A high death rate in a poultry flock tipped off a federal agency to a case of bird flu at a Thamesford-area farm, an industry group says.
“The testing on those particular premises would have been initiated by a higher than normal mortality situation,” said Ingrid DeVisser, chair of the Feather Board Command Centre, an industry group that provides emergency response to Ontario’s poultry farmers.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says outbreaks of the “highly pathogenic” H5N1 strain of avian flu have been confirmed in a poultry flock in Zorra Township in western Oxford County and a poultry flock in a township northeast of Guelph.
Avian influenza is spreading in wild bird populations around the world and “presents a significant national concern as birds migrate to Canada,” the agency said.
Poultry farmers are advised to practice good biosecurity habits such as restricting access to their poultry houses and ensuring equipment is cleaned and disinfected before it is brought in.
DeVisser said Tuesday she did not know how many birds are dead. Asked what kind of bird tested positive at the Thamesford-area operation, she said “I can only confirm that it’s poultry.”
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has quarantined both farms and set up 10-kilometre control zones around them. The agency is controlling traffic on and off those farms and monitoring bird health, DeVisser said.
Asked how a bird on the Thamesford-area farm could have got the disease, DeVisser said, “We do know that wild birds carry avian influenza. We know that they’re currently flying and we know that . . . the disease does carry through water droplets, and we’ve certainly had some warm, wet weather.”
Last week, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed avian flu in a wild red-tailed hawk in the Waterloo area.
DeVisser’s group sent out an advisory to poultry farmers telling them to increase their biosecurity measures. “We need to do everything that we can to make sure that we keep this out of our barns,” she said.
In a way, the recent coronavirus pandemic has helped to prepare farmers, she said.
“We’ve all had a bit of practice with this with COVID. We kind of know what to do. . . we limit our contact, we meet virtually, so you know, those are the things that we do to mitigate the risk” of the flu spreading to other farms, she said.
DeVisser said this should not affect the poultry supply. “We want to encourage people to eat their Easter turkey,” she said.
Ontario is the largest producer of poultry in the country, with much of the industry in Southwestern Ontario. Ontario farmers produce more than 200 million chickens a year, while Ontario turkey producers market between 85 million to 90 million kilograms of turkey annually, about 45 per cent of the total raised in Canada.
Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs says bird flu is not a threat to food safety when proper handling and cooking occur.
It also says avian influenza is not a significant public health concern for healthy people who are not in regular contact with infected birds.
In 2015, three farms in Oxford County were hit with outbreaks of an H5N2 strain of avian flu. About 80,000 birds, mainly turkeys, were wiped out as officials spent months trying to contain the disease.
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