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As farmers impatiently await government's plans to fast-track the use of vaccines to fight the Avian bird flu, experts believe the state-owned enterprise, Ondersterpoort Biological Products (OBP) does not have the capacity to produce the vaccines fast enough.
On Thursday, Deputy President Paul Mashatile announced that government would soon announce a support package for the farmers impacted by the Avian flu outbreak, to curb their financial losses.
According to the department of agriculture, land reform and rural development, the current influenza A(H5N1) outbreaks have been ongoing since April this year and to date, there have been 10 outbreaks in poultry in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal and 39 outbreaks in non-poultry birds in the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape.
So far 7.5 million infected birds have been culled this year resulting in severe economic impacts. The latest outbreak was earlier this month.
Paul Makube, FNB agricultural economist told City Press that the OBP suffered a setback in terms of capacity, and did not have adequate infrastructure.
Mabuke said:
Makube added that in future, the country will be able to deal with Avian flu as it had previously dealt with the Newcastle disease, which is no longer an issue.
“The department [of agriculture] is going to announce packages for the losses the farmers might have incurred, as the losses around this outbreak are not insurable and some of the farmers raised the [red] flag around that.”
READ: WATCH: Chicken and eggs: Avian flu devastating SA's poultry industry, and the worst is yet to come
Fred Hume, the managing director of Hume International added: "We do understand the need to explore this avenue, South Africa is faced with the worst Avian flu in its history, unfortunately this is becoming more prominent worldwide. Previously updates of bird flu were sporadic, now bird flu is endemic around the world.”
He conceded that the recent outbreaks were outside the migratory patterns of the birds that obviously spread this virus.
“It's getting more and more tricky; South Africa has put trading barriers in place to protect the local industry from the strain of Avian flu. What that means in practice is that if a country is confirmed to have bird flu, South Africa automatedly bans that country, and will not import live birds or poultry in that country.”
READ: More bad news for chicken and egg prices as poultry industry struggles to contain avian influenza
Hume said that this did not make sense as the country was facing a massive outbreak on its own. Speaking on the OBP, he said that the entity had been in a state of decline for many years, many of its vaccines were in short supply and must be supplemented with imported products.
“I believe that South Africa is currently working on registering vaccines, which implies that they would have to be imported. That is the talk now.”
Hume said the large part of the problem was government's inability to compensate the farmers for the birds that have been culled. In the case of an outbreak such as Avian flu, the farmers were still awaiting compensation for the 2017 outbreak.
Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of SA said:
Hume said what hindered having Avian flu under control was the fact that when the farmers realised that their birds had the disease, government put the farms under quarantine to cull the birds and they suffered financial losses.
“What they are doing now, I am led to believe and I am not sure of this, if the farmers realise that they have a problem they often move these birds to another area and slaughter them to realise some commercial value in the product. I can't really blame them. They are out on a limb here.”
