There is not yet an approved vaccine, but vaccinating poultry against bird flu is one step closer. The European Commission allows the vaccination of chickens from 12 March.
“A super good thing,” says Albert Zantinge, chicken farmer in Orvelte. At the same time, he thinks that it will not save him and his colleagues in the short term. “My feeling is that it will take another one and a half to two years. It is of no use to us if there is no vaccine then. But it will be necessary to vaccinate, because it can no longer be done like this.”
Because the farmer has been worried for a year. First of all, concerns because an outbreak of the H5N1 variant can be disastrous for the poultry farmer. Zantinge: “If it happens somewhere, you know that many animals are killed. That also applies to animals at the neighbors.” Russian roulette, wild birds can spread the virus.
Zantinge has now moved beyond that uncertainty. “If you’re in it for a long time, you kind of become immune to it. At some point you have to let it go or you won’t get back to sleep at all.”
And so the focus is on running the business, and that’s a second concern financially because of the current situation. Due to the penning obligation, the chickens in Drijber have not been allowed outside for months, so there is no free range anymore. For that designation, the poultry farmer normally receives a surcharge on the egg price. A year ago, Zantinge already calculated that missing out on the allowance will cost him about 700 euros per day.
“You consciously opt for a sustainable branch, with a range,” he says. “And you know that something can always happen, but it can’t go on like this any longer. First it’s a month, then it becomes three and now it’s been almost a year. You still get the allowance for the first sixteen weeks, but after that no more.”
And so the land around his company lies unused. “We have more than a million hectares of land around the barn, but you can’t do anything with it. It’s like a carpenter, who also has to use his hammer to earn money.”
For now, he says he will keep it up for a while. But around him he also sees farmers who are struggling financially. “Egg prices are going up, but that doesn’t mean that every poultry farmer also has more income. Some are tied to the contract price, others do get the current value.”
All those worries would largely be over with a vaccine. But there is no approved vaccine that has been proven to work against the current avian flu virus. “And if there is a vaccine, there is not yet a hundred percent guarantee that it works,” Zantinge adds.
See how a nanobuddy can replace millions of jabs here:
