Bird flu returns with double the force, all because a vaccination team privately injected blood water

The avian flu outbreak cannot be stopped. For more than a year, even though the Council of Agriculture has continuously culled infected poultry, the virus continues to spread, and recently a restocked goose farm broke out with avian flu again. Industry insiders say bluntly that local farmers, following old practices, hire "injection teams" to administer homemade serum to ducks and geese. This serum is made from poultry blood obtained from large slaughterhouses from complex sources, and may even be mixed with feathers and feces; some is even just bloody water. Injecting it back into ducklings not only has no disease-prevention effect, "it is simply accelerating the spread of the virus." Early on, when there were no vaccines, duck and goose farmers made their own serum for disease prevention. Like humans, ducks and geese encounter all kinds of diseases during growth, so newly hatched ducklings and goslings must be vaccinated to produce antibodies in their bodies, so that they have resistance when the virus attacks. According to recommendations from the Council of Agriculture's Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, waterfowl generally need four vaccines to prevent and treat "duck viral hepatitis," "waterfowl parvovirus infection," "Riemerella anatipestifer infection," and "fowl cholera." In the early days when Taiwan did not yet have vaccines, farmers used "homemade vaccines" for prevention and treatment. The so-called "homemade vaccine" was made by taking the blood of adult poultry that had survived illness to make serum, which was then injected into young poultry. For example, adult ducks that had survived "waterfowl parvovirus infection" would have shorter beaks and lose feathers. Early farmers could judge by appearance which ducks had survived the disease and already had antibodies. When ducklings needed injection, they would take the blood of these adult ducks, let it clot and undergo centrifugal separation, then take the pale yellow serum and inject it into one-day-old ducklings. Opening early case reports from local livestock disease control centers, it is not hard to find that in dealing with duck and goose disease prevention and treatment, experts not only proposed vaccinating breeder poultry, but also suggested injecting serum from adult poultry that had survived illness to reduce the mortality rate of young poultry. Although current agricultural authorities repeatedly emphasize the need for vaccination during disease-prevention campaigns, the industry, due to factors such as vaccine price and insufficient vaccine quality, still commonly uses serum injection for disease prevention. Farmers Entrust Injection Teams to Administer Serum, but It Is Mixed with Different Sources and Impurities Li Xincong, manager of Hua Co., Ltd., who is familiar with waterfowl industry operations, pointed out that in the early days, when farming volumes were not large, duck farmers would support one another in administering vaccines and serum. Later, as rural labor declined, the people who had previously helped administer vaccines and serum formed "injection teams." These injection teams had no professional veterinary or animal husbandry training, were not regulated by the government, and have always existed in a gray area. Now the injection teams' administration of serum is very different from the early days. Some industry insiders mention that since the Council of Agriculture promoted electric slaughtering, injection teams, in order to administer serum to ducks and geese, would go to slaughterhouses to collect blood. But a slaughterhouse might slaughter 2 to 3 batches in a day, with ducks from different duck farms, and the blood source might simultaneously contain multiple antibodies, antigens, and viruses from different duck farms. Moreover, "if the slaughterhouse does not stun the ducks with electricity and instead cuts the throat to bleed them, the ducks will instinctively excrete feces, and feathers that have not been plucked from the neck will also fall into the blood trough, becoming the injection team's source of blood collection." After the injection team obtains duck blood, most will dilute it at a ratio of 1:10, that is, one liter of duck blood mixed with ten liters of water, and use it as "serum." However, industry insiders say this is not serum at all, just bloody water. It is understood that, taking antibody preparations for preventing and treating duck hepatitis disease as an example, one dose for one duck costs NT$1; if serum is added, one dose costs NT$1.3. Difference Between Serum and Bloody Water: The normal method for making waterfowl serum is to place collected blood into a centrifuge and rapidly separate blood cells and serum; "the serum will float on the upper layer and appear pale yellow." However, industry insiders familiar with the waterfowl industry mention that the serum currently injected by injection teams for duck farms and goose farms is merely collected blood diluted with water; its color is red, not serum, but "bloody water." Industry: Those Not Sick After Injection Also Became Infected In the past, avian flu outbreaks were mainly concentrated in chickens, but from the end of 2014 to the beginning of 2015, large numbers of ducks and geese died after being infected with avian flu. Ducks and geese were previously regarded as "virus-carrier animals" that were not prone to illness after infection. On this basis, industry insiders speculate that "the blood of ducks and geese in Taiwan may have long contained avian flu viruses, but as these viruses are drawn and injected by injection teams and then returned to ducklings, they have accelerated virus mutation, 'and diseases that ducklings originally did not catch have all been caught.'" Some experienced duck farmers have observed that since ducks and geese also broke out with avian flu, ducks' tolerance of climate has become lower, and they are now increasingly difficult to raise. In the past, continuous rain might cause 5% of ducklings to die on the same day, but now the mortality rate has risen to 20%. If Private Serum Injection Is Not Stopped, Switching Waterfowl to Closed Housing Will Be Useless Too. Experienced duck farmers point out that in the early days, because of a lack of qualified vaccines, serum injection was the only option, but serum has been used for 20 to 30 years. In particular, the successive outbreaks of avian flu in ducks and geese are internationally notifiable infectious diseases. The waterfowl industry should abandon this high-risk disease-prevention method as soon as possible, return to normal disease-prevention procedures, and strengthen the correct and legal vaccination of all breeding poultry. In addition, after ducks and geese broke out with avian flu, the Council of Agriculture stipulated that restocking waterfowl must adopt closed, non-open housing. Industry insiders expressed agreement while also calling for attention: farmers are not opposed to switching waterfowl to closed-loop controlled housing; if in the future it is changed to closed housing, but there are no complete and good vaccines available, young ducks and goslings will still continue to be given "serum of unknown origin." The spread of disease may be caused by serum of unknown origin and similarly cannot be controlled. No matter how good the external environment is, this blind spot should be deeply considered. According to the 2014 Taiwan Poultry Statistics Handbook by the Agricultural Development Foundation and data from the Zhunan Animal Testing Laboratory, Taiwan produced 28.91 million ducklings and 7.41 million goslings in 2014. Domestic qualified marketed vaccines include vaccines produced by three domestic companies, one imported pharmaceutical company, and the Animal Health Research Institute. For example, "fowl cholera inactivated vaccine" has only 17.58 million doses a year, and "duck viral hepatitis antibody preparation" has only 10.81 million doses a year, with coverage of less than half. What vaccines are being used for more than half of the ducks and geese? This is worth exploring. Industry insiders believe that to solve the problem of insufficient vaccines in the waterfowl industry, the Tamsui Animal Health Testing Institute, which is responsible for domestically produced vaccines, needs to increase production. Duck and goose farmers' associations should coordinate with the Central Animal Industry Association to provide injection teams with training courses related to biosafety and vaccine operation. At the same time, the Council of Agriculture should strengthen outreach to farmers about correct disease-prevention concepts and should require mandatory qualified vaccination for breeding ducks and breeding geese, and encourage commercial duck and goose farms to administer qualified vaccines, strengthening comprehensive immunity; only then is it possible to bring the avian flu outbreak under control. Council of Agriculture: Private Serum Injection Is Illegal; We Can Only Keep Issuing Fines In response, Shih Tai-hua, deputy director-general of the Council of Agriculture's Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, said that private serum injection by farmers or injection teams is illegal, and once agricultural authorities discover it, they will uniformly impose fines of NT$60,000 to NT$300,000 under the "Animal Drugs Control Act." Shih Tai-hua stated frankly that in the face of the popular private use of serum for disease prevention and treatment, the Council of Agriculture has promoted awareness many times, and the only current approach is to keep issuing fines. As for the industry's response that the current number of vaccines is insufficient for Taiwan's waterfowl population, Shih Tai-hua said that no situation of insufficient vaccines has been heard of so far, and if the industry reports otherwise, the Council of Agriculture will coordinate with domestic pharmaceutical companies to increase production. Read Here: https://www.newsmarket.com.tw/blog/81941/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=newsmarket" class="nc_tweet"> Email