Poultry constraints still in place

RESTRICTIONS on many commercial poultry farms to combat avian influenza are continuing in the region, despite easing at affected properties beyond Golden Plains Shire.

The state’s farming authority Agriculture Victoria have announced certain movement restrictions for affected properties would be lifted following the virus’ outbreak at Meredith earlier this year.

The disease spread to six of the region’s poultry farms in winter as well as one at Terang, with the latter seeing the most significant reductions in movement restrictions.

A statement from Agriculture Victoria said the easing of restrictions is due to no new cases being discovered since late June.

“As no further cases of avian influenza have been detected in Victoria since 24 June, changes to the control orders have been gazetted, taking Victoria one step closer to being free from the high pathogenicity avian influenza virus,” the statement said.

“Agriculture Victoria is continuing to respond to the detection of avian influenza at eight Victorian poultry farms. Avian influenza is a viral disease of birds found globally.”

The easing of restrictions are dependent on the respective areas of control, with more concessions being made for the control areas compared to the more severely-impacted restricted areas.

As part of the easing, the housing requirement mandating poultry farmers and owners to keep their birds as enclosed as possible, has been lifted for the control areas in both regions.

Meanwhile, the restricted area around the impacted Terang property has been reduced from a five-kilometre radius to a 1.5-kilometre span, while the control area has been reduced from 15 kilometres to five kilometres.

Both areas of control and restriction for Meredith and surrounds will remain the same.

One of the affected local businesses is Maude’s WesEggs, and owner Wes Humpage said restrictions are continuing to impact them despite none of their poultry receiving the virus. “Nothing’s changed,” he said. “It’s all smoke and mirrors.

“When they started allowing egg movements with permits, nothing’s changed to that date and it’s been months.

“Most farms are clean. They’re moving into a stage when they’re putting central flocks into farms to restock them.

“My expectation as the last remaining farm in the restricted area producing eggs is they would’ve started to reduce the permitting requirements like doing them weekly or monthly.

“The housing lift doesn’t impact us. I’ve found it incredibly frustrating they’re not taking a risk-based approach. I just wish they’d expedite the decision making. At the same point in the previous outbreak, they’d already started reducing permits.”

A map of the affected region and the sites’ respective areas of restriction and control can be found via the Agriculture Victoria website.