The poultry sector in South Africa is undergoing serious challenges. Ongoing load shedding and power disruptions have put tremendous pressure and additional costs on the industry, which makes producing poultry products extremely expensive.
Five to 10 years ago AI was pretty much the only serious poultry disease South Africa did not have. There have been cases of what is called low pathogenic AI in ostriches for some time, but the commercial poultry industry was, for a long time, free of the highly pathogenic strain of the virus. This is unfortunately no longer the case.In the past, government Veterinary Services was reluctant to allow vaccination of poultry against AI in South Africa.
The layers, as the name suggests, are the birds that lay eggs for human consumption. The broiler birds are the meat birds. Namibia bans poultry imports from SA due to bird flu ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW As poultry is the most affordable source of protein, this will cause major food shortages and additional hunger problems.There are efforts to now import vaccines against AI. This will assist in controlling the disease in the long term, but will unfortunately not do much to control the current problem.
In simple terms, if the bird has, let’s say 10 antibodies and there are nine viruses, the antibodies win and the birds are safe. If there are 10 antibodies, but 11 viruses – the viruses win and the birds die.