Darragh McCullough: We’ll all be in droves when bird flu really breaks out

And with the bulk of the country’s Christmas turkey flock either already slaughtered or on the way, it looks like Ireland has escaped the worst-case scenario for another year.

But delve a little deeper into the facts, and the precarious nature of the poultry industry becomes clearer.

There are currently over 100 farms in full lockdown in the Monaghan area. This is the heart of the poultry industry, where the highest concentration of hatcheries, rearing operations and fattening operations coexist in an area of ​​approximately 300 square kilometers.

These farmers come to their herds first thing each day with a sense of dread of what awaits them when they open their doors.

A flock of 40,000 chirping, healthy turkeys about to be killed would be worth well over 100,000 euros.

Avian flu is so deadly that it can wipe out a previously healthy swarm in a matter of days. First, the birds stop drinking and become silent. Then lethargy sets in, with turkeys usually dying within four days of contracting the disease.

With so much at stake, growers I’ve spoken to speak of sleepless nights. Who can blame them? They are afraid to walk their family on the beach or near a body of water for fear of contaminating their shoes with bird droppings or other material from the wild birds that brought the disease to those shores.

Anyone who has walked a beach in recent months will have seen the carcasses of gannets and gulls littering the sand. But ducks and geese are even more dangerous to a poultry farmer as both of these species can live with the disease and act as vectors as they move through Ireland’s waterways.

Modern poultry systems are such fine-tuned operations that producers need every day performance from their state-of-the-art equipment to keep up with paybacks.

So the farmers in the restricted area are praying and hoping that no further positive case will be detected in their region as they will be prevented from replenishing their units until 30 days after the last outbreak.

More than half of the 1.2 million free-ranging Christmas turkeys in the UK have either been culled or died after contracting the disease.

Turkey’s supermarket contracts were signed months ago, so prices will not change for shoppers lucky enough to snag one of the few birds that end up in each store.

Irish breeders were lucky: Less than one percent of the country’s 800,000 Christmas turkeys were culled to stem the spread of the disease.

The other 99 pieces have either already been safely slaughtered and are ready for dispatch or are on their way to slaughter in the next few days.

But there remain many uncomfortable questions for the sector to grapple with. This is the third year in a row that farmers have been warned about bird flu, leading to free range and organic flocks being locked down to prevent outdoor exposure to the disease.

Does this mean the end of free-range farming at this time of year, when the risk of bird flu peaks in winter, when migratory birds are migrating en masse on their Atlantic flyways?

Is the massive concentration of production in the border area sustainable? These districts account for nearly three quarters of all production, making it ideal for when an outbreak of bird disease spreads like wildfire.

Many farmers are clinging to the hope that a vaccine will be developed, similar to the flu shots that an increasing proportion of humanity is relying on for protection during the winter months.

However, veterinarians with knowledge in this area question the practicality of developing a vaccine for a virus that can mutate so quickly.

In the meantime, the continued spread of bird flu is only widening the window for the disease to make the leap into the human population.

This has happened only a few times in all the years that avian influenza has moved through the global poultry chain, but with deadly consequences for the poor people affected.

We know that thoroughly cooking eggs or meat is a failsafe way to ensure poultry products are safe. But the possibility of avian flu mutating enough to cross the species barrier is sure to cause more sleepless nights for poultry farmers in the weeks, months and years to come.

​Darragh McCullough runs a mixed farm in Meath, elmgrovefarm.ie.