00:00During that outbreak that occurred in 2024, three states were affected and three strains
00:08of high path avian influenza were involved.
00:11That meant there was over about 2 million layers depopulated, and that was about 10%
00:17of the national flock.
00:18So that's been quite significant.
00:20So that was the immediate cause of the egg shortage.
00:24And the resolution, we have to go through a resolution, which is depopulating the farm,
00:28doing disposal, and doing cleaning and disinfection.
00:32So that process takes many months.
00:34And then after that, they have to do a phase called resolution, which is now proving those
00:38particular farms are free of disease.
00:41So overall, that takes about six months.
00:43Then, of course, you have to repopulate these farms, and to repopulate these farms you need
00:47to get young day olds and grow them up, they're called pullets, and that takes about six months
00:52as well.
00:53And then, of course, you need to produce extra day olds, and you need the parents to produce
00:57those extra day olds, and that takes many months as well.
01:00So before we can even get back to normal population, we're looking at about 12 months.
01:04The high path avian influenza outbreaks we have in this country are associated with strains
01:09that actually come from our wild waterfowl.
01:11It's a spillover effect with free-range birds, particularly when they get cross-contamination
01:17with their commercial poultry, the virus spills over into commercial poultry, and then they
01:21get infected and start to die.
01:24In this case, we actually did not destroy any birds that weren't clinically affected
01:28by avian influenza.
01:30In previous times, we've had controlled areas, restricted areas, and we used to destroy everything
01:35in the restricted area, but that wasn't the case this time.
01:38We tried to maintain all these flocks, but all of the birds were destroyed, which included
01:43some pullets, a small number of ducks and broaders.
01:46They were all affected and were tested positive for the disease.
01:49At the moment, there's a code of welfare that has been finished, that has been completed,
01:54which is going to demand the phasing out of cage eggs.
01:58The timeframes are uncertain, and that's creating a lot of uncertainty in the industry, because
02:03to replace those with alternate systems like free-range and barn requires a lot of capital
02:07input.
02:09So that's also leading to a reluctance to spend money in the system at the moment to
02:15do more capital expansion because of that uncertainty.
02:19Then on top of that is that when you have free-range birds, it's very hard to control
02:23their biosecurity in regard to their horizontal contact with wild waterfowl.
02:28So consequently, it's paradoxical, while we consider free-range birds have better welfare,
02:33really we go back to the old disease situation.
02:36These birds now we find are much more difficult to control.
02:38They're internal and external parasites, vermin from things like foxes.
02:43They also have fecal-oral cycle, bacterial diseases.
02:46So the overall performance of birds in alternate systems is generally poorer and more expensive
02:52with a larger footprint.
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