September 30, 2004

Thailand To Change Farming Ways To End Bird Flu
 

Hard-hit Thailand plans a campaign to change poultry farming methods as it seeks to stamp out the deadly bird flu virus before migrating wildfowl return during the northern winter, a senior minister said on Thursday.

"If we have to spend hundreds of millions of baht or billions of baht, we will," according to Deputy Prime Minister Chaturon Chaisang, who is leading the drive to eradicate the H5N1 virus that has killed 20 Vietnamese and 10 Thais.

"The priorities now are to protect humans from the disease and minimize the chances of chickens being infected," he said two days after Thailand announced its first probable case of human transmission.

The planned changes will be a great challenge in a country where more than 60 percent of the people live on the land and the vast majority keep chickens, ducks and other fowl.

Chickens in Thailand, as in most Asian villages, often wander freely, even in and out of houses. They defecate anywhere, spreading any disease they might have.

Huge flocks of ducks move over wide areas in a largely nomadic existence in search of food.

That will have to be curtailed, Chaturon said.

"Given that people have died of bird flu, we can no longer allow free range poultry farming to continue at the current large scale," he said. The ducks would have to be kept on farms.

The campaign, due to start next week, would include incentives and punishments to persuade people to raise poultry in hygienic conditions and reduce the risk of disease.

"We will sponsor farmers to raise their chickens away from their homes, give them nets, cages and so on," Chaturon said.