Ray Smith: Ministry of Primary Industries Director-General on the strain of bird fly found at Kiwi poultry farms

There's confidence from the Ministry for Primary Industries that a bird flu strain will be eradicated. 

Around 80,000 chickens are set to be slaughtered after the disease was found at a Mainland Poultry-owned property at Moeraki in Otago yesterday. 

A second barn tested positive last night, but neither is the strain circulating in wildlife globally. 

MPI Director-General Ray Smith told Mike Hosking they're mapping half a dozen properties with links to the farm. 

He says it'll take a couple of weeks before the outer limits of the virus are confirmed, and expects it to be relatively contained. 

Live or raw poultry exports have been stopped for the time being. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Version of the bird flu. So what are we going
to do. We got on the Tigo bird farm here
about forty thousand birds in the same shit. They've been culled.
MPI have put all the poultry experts on hold. Of course,
the NPI Director General Ray Smith is with us. Ray morning, Mike,
was this day in one way, shape or form, always.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Coming Well, this is not the big bird flu worry
we had. Actually, even though we've been promoting this quite heavily,
this is not one that's spread by migratory birds that
around the world, which hasn't arrived in New Zealand yet.
But this is a development of a bird flu strain
that is quite common in poultry farms around the world.
It's a series strain and it's largely confined to the

(00:37):
poultry industry. And so look, it's a bit of an
update on the farm in Otago. It's a farm that's
got around one hundred and sixty thousand birds across four
big barns. Another barn when positive for this highly pathogenic
virus just last night. That's not unexpected. We can have
something of this on a farm and so we'll be

(00:59):
actually coming stage two farms about eighty thousand birds and
we'll get that underway tomorrow. It's quite a bit of planning,
as you'll appreciate, to.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Make how do you kill them?

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Container ied CO two, which is the standard method used
internationally in use hearing Zalan.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Okay, would you expect it to leak properties?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, we're mapping to half a dozen properties that have
links to this particular property. Remember, biosecurity viruses and diseases
move through the movement of people and products or live animals,
and so we're just checking those to make sure that
it hasn't got there. And it'll take a couple of
weeks before we really are confident about the outer limits

(01:40):
of with the viruses. We expect it to be relatively contained.
But this has got about a fourteen day incubation period,
so we'll take a little while before we certain.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
You speak with a level of confidence. Is that fair?

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Well, we've been through this a few times, Mike, I
mean in my time here. You know, we've removed infectious
verstal disease, chicken virus, We've we removed salmonella from eggs.
Of course, dealt with micros, pleasant abou eve evil, Queensland
fruit fly, a number of tomato and potato diseases. Look,
I think we'll get on top of this. We've got
the farm manager there, John Mackay, who runs Mainland Pultry. Look,

(02:13):
he's an excellent operator. He went to the UK with
my team just a couple of months ago to look
at how we manage highly pathogenic avian INTWINDSA. I've got
a lot of confidence with the John before. I think
we'll get this done.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Good stuff right, Appreciate it very much. Rich Smith, who's
the MPI Director General.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
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Speaker 1 (02:30):
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