Sunita Narain: The business of bird-flu

DOWN TO EARTH

It will be a mistake to believe that we have contained the problem of bird flu, simply because we have culled some hundred thousand birds and may vaccinate, in the coming days, some hundred thousand more chicken. We are missing the point: the mutating virus is not about birds but about the practice of "cultivating" these birds and how it is changing in the modern food industry.

The world's favourite chicken is increasingly grown in places known as "factory farms". Unlike the traditional backyard or household poultry, these operations are automated and industrialised where thousands of live birds are squeezed into spaces so small that they cannot move. The chicken is vaccinated time and again to prevent diseases; it is fed everything from antibiotics to additives in its feed to promote growth in this profitable production system. In this environment, the birds have lowered immunity because of their genetic uniformity and need for frequent vaccination. In other words, they are sitting ducks when the disease hits.

The business is built on the model of large-scale vertically integrated agri-business companies. Simply put, it means that a few large companies franchise chicken growing to contract growers, to whom they supply the newly hatched chicken and all other materials, like feed, vitamins, vaccines and antibiotics till the chicken is taken back for sale or export.

In India, Venkateshwara Hatcheries "" Venky's India Ltd "" is such an integrator company, working in the Nandurbar district, where bird flu hit. The scale and control of this firm gives it the power to cover up "" as indeed did Venky's in Nandurbar "" and it can impair public health with impunity.

What is needed is to better regulate the industrial processes to grow chicken so that the virus does not breed and does not grow. The business needs to improve the genetic stock of the birds and raise their immunity against diseases like traditional backyard poultry farmers do. But instead of reforming the poultry industry the business of the flu is promoting the very industry and its practices. In fact, it is destroying the livelihood of the people who practice a different kind of poultry, the small and marginal farmers.

After the avian flu hit Asia, the FAO told governments that while it would be possible to tighten biosafety in commercial poultry farms, it would be impossible do it for non-commercial enterprises, such as backyard production systems, where flocks forage outdoors. Its recommendation was that animal production should move to larger farms, where surveillance is possible. Danielle Nierenberg, who researches this sector at the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute reports that this led Vietnam in April 2005 to impose a ban on live poultry markets and asking farms to convert to factory-style methods. Thailand plans to follow suit.

This when FAO itself reports that smallholder poultry is critical for livelihood and food (nutrition) security in vast parts of the poor world. Clearly, food (and chicken) then is too serious a business to be left to industry alone. This lesson must be learnt.