Poultry breeders to get bird flu vaccines

Poultry breeders to get bird flu vaccines

Suherdjoko, The Jakarta Post, Semarang

Over 23 million doses of bird flu vaccine have been prepared to
prevent the disease from spreading like wildfire in Central Java,
an official said on Tuesday.

According to the head of the Central Java animal husbandry
office, Sugiyono Pranata, the bird flu, or avian influenza, had
already spread to poultry farms in Boyolali, Karanganyar, Sragen
and Tegal, killing hundreds of thousands of quails, chickens and
ducks in those regencies.

"The result of Veterinary Diseases Research Bureau lab test in
Wates, Yogyakarta shows the cases in Boyolali and Tegal are
indeed bird flu," Sugiyono said.

The vaccine, he added, would be provided for small-scale
poultry farmers while large-scale farms would be asked to conduct
their own vaccinations.

The farmers, he said, should also take strict biosecurity
measures to prevent a further spread of the disease, including
regular spraying of disinfectants.

The bird flu cases in Boyolali, Sugiyono claimed, occurred
because the quails were not vaccinated. In that regency, bird flu
has killed approximately 80,000 quails.

The poultry farmers' demand for the government to compensate
them Rp 3,000 for each quail had not yet been discussed, he said.

"In the previous bird flu case, compensatory funds were only
given to farmers who lost more than 5,000 chickens. But we still
haven't discussed compensation for the affected farmers this
year," he said.

Central Java was also the worst hit area when the bird flu
outbreak swept the country between August 2003 and July 2004,
affecting 27 out of the province's 35 regencies and killing 8.1
million fowl.

During that period, an estimated 16.2 million died out of the
nearly 180 million poultry population in the 16 affected
provinces.

Sugiyono said that destroying all poultry products would be
hard to do in Indonesia.

"It would just be far too expensive so we'll do it
selectively. We'll only destroy fowl in affected farms, either by
burning or burying them," he said.