October 1, 2004

Many Thai Poultry Farmers Face Crisis In Bird Flu Overhaul
 

Thousands of Thailand's poultry farmers will probably go out of business because they cannot afford to implement government plans to overhaul farming methods in a bid to stamp out the deadly bird flu.

Already reeling from the slaughter of tens of millions of chickens since bird flu was confirmed in January, farmers are now being pressed to abandon the basic wood-and-wire chicken coops which have provided a steady income for decades.

The government wants farmers to build better-sealed coops requiring costly ventilation systems to help prevent migrating wildfowl - widely blamed for the epidemic - from infecting chickens.

Spurred into action by a first probable case of human transmission of bird flu this week, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has set ministers an end-October deadline to wipe out the H5N1 virus.

In November, those migrating wildfowl will start arriving back in balmy Southeast Asia to escape the northern winter.

But many farmers do not have the money for changes they doubt will cure the bird flu problem completely. They are resigned to leaving it to Western-style "factory farms" to resurrect a $1 billion a year export industry.

The government currently faces a massive challenge. It wants to change a millennia-old tradition of living in close proximity to animals that has largely survived Thailand's modernisation push in the last two decades.