Widespread testing for avian influenza provides confidence, says VFF

Five poultry farms in Golden Plains and Corangamite shires have been quarantined and about 800,000 birds destroyed, since the first outbreak of H7N3 was detected on a property near Meredith, last month.

Another second property at Terang, linked to the first property, was detected with the H7N9 strain.

Avian influenza virus was confirmed at a fifth Victorian poultry farm last week and it is also now in quarantine.

VFF Egg Group president Meg Parkinson, Leongatha North, said she was hopeful the outbreak would not spread.

"If we are lucky, if there are any other outbreaks they will all be on properties in the controlled and restricted areas," Ms Parkinson said.

"AgVic is doing tests on every poultry farm, in those regions, every day - when they say there is nothing there, we are pretty sure there is nothing there."

She said avian influenza was an airborne virus.

"It's simple a matter of getting into the sheds on people's boots, or the wind blows it in, because this is respiratory virus," she said.

Ms Parkinson said she was confident the outbreak would not spread, although it was difficult to predict.

"You can't stop the wind blowing and you can't stop ducks flying over," she said.

"We really do hope its running its course and there aren't any more outbreaks, but I have a lot of confidence AgVic will know if there is any more."

Coles this week announced a two-carton temporary limit on egg purchases as cases of bird flu spread across Victoria.

Ms Parkinson said whether or not purchase limits were imposed depended on who was supplying the eggs to each of the supermarket chains.

Two of Brad McAuliffe's farms, Avgo Eggs in Meredith and Surf Coast Eggs in Terang, have been closed down.

"It's been absolutely gut-wrenching for us as a business, especially going through what we have gone through," Mr McAuliffe said.

"We monitor, on a daily basis, our mortality and production rates - over the course of probably two days we saw a little bit of a drop in production, then we saw some higher mortality rates.

"I am talking maybe one or two extra mortalities across the first day, and across the second day a handful - we reported it to authorities but there were no clinical signs of anything.

"By the third day, we came back with a positive test."

He said he'd been in the industry all his life.

"We have five farms in our group and obviously having the two separate strains is even more devastating, because they are not interconnected at all.

"They are two separate strains and two sources of bad luck, as such."

The first deaths occurred in free range chickens, which were likely to have had contact with wild birds, he said.

Mr McAuliffe supplies eggs to the major supermarkets and south-west Victorian hospitality businesses.

Insurance would cover the loss of the 550,000 birds at both sites, he said.

"But nothing supports the loss of production and the loss of retail space we had, so we have pretty much had to put all our plans on hold, which is going to put us back years 5-10 years potentially," he said.

"We had plans to transition out of our cages into cage free and free range and we had plans for growing our other sites, but that's obviously on hold now, as we try and get our feet back on the ground and producing again."

He said the response and guidance from Agriculture Victoria had been "fantastic".

"Their support networks and obviously their systems to try and control the disease as much as they could have all been top notch," he said.

"We have a fairly strict biosecurity procedures in place, so we have managed to keep it (the virus) to the two sites."

It was impossible to tell if it would affect the other sites, he said.

"If the other sites were in the general area, there would be a real risk, but being more than 300 kilometres away we are pretty comfortable right there."

The companies other farms were in the St Arnaud region, he said.