Poultry disease wipes out 2.8 million chickens

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

The outbreak of a highly contagious poultry virus that swept through West Java's two major chicken suppliers have killed 2.8 million young chickens in the first quarter of this year, an official at the West Java husbandry agency said on Wednesday.

Head of the agency's veterinary division Musny Suatmojo said his office had isolated the virus, which caused the incurable Marek's disease, to prevent it from spreading to other regencies from Ciamis and Tasikmalaya.

Experts assured the public that the disease does not affect humans.

"This is the biggest case ever in the history of agriculture here. We are still examining the factors that cause it as we usually only have one or two cases," Musny told a hearing with the West Java Provincial Legislative Council's Commission B for economic affairs.

"Several chickens are still infected, but the number of cases is rapidly decreasing," he added.

Ciamis and Tasikmalaya are the centers for chicken breeding, which produce over 19 million broilers weekly, mostly for the Jakarta market.

Marek's disease produces cancer in poultry and is characterized especially by the proliferation of lymphoid cells and is caused by a herpes virus.

The disease was named after Joszef Marek, a Hungarian veterinarian who first discovered the illness in 1907.

The disease, Musny said, entered Indonesia about 1960 when chickens were imported into the country.

Infected animals have a loss in appetite, are lethargic and have a high body temperature.

It usually infects poultry between the ages of three weeks and four months, whose immunity is low because of bad weather, commonly during the transitional periods between the dry and rainy seasons.

Chickens are usually sent to markets when they are one-and-a- half months old.

Musny assured the public that the disease was not a zoonosis one, meaning it could not be passed on to humans.

He said that his office had instructed breeders to burn every infected chicken and sterilize the coops for 50 days to 90 days to isolate the virus.

In an attempt to prevent further spread of the virus, which does not have a vaccine yet, the husbandry agency has distributed vaccines for Newcastle disease as well as Gumboro's disease.

Chairman of the West Java chapter of the Association of National Chicken Breeders (PPAN) Dedi Dermawan said that there was limited spread of the virus although there is a possibility of its return.

He said the disease had caused Rp 19 billion (US$21 million) in losses to breeders.