It has been over 100 days since Victoria’s largest outbreak of bird flu began and there are positive signs for the industry as farms begin to recover from the fallout.
Agriculture Victoria has confirmed an affected farm has started restocking poultry and officials have begun to scale back quarantine operations after two months with no positive detections of the disease.
Thousands of people have been working behind the scenes screening, researching, and analysing to help keep the outbreak under control.
One of those is senior research scientist in virology at Agriculture Victoria, Dr Peter Mee, who has been a busy man over the past few months.
“There was a flurry of activity when we saw the [first] positive result come through. You have some dread,” he said.
“It’s been quite an event — processing thousands of samples seven days a week, every week, for a few months now.
“The team is pretty amazing here.”
Dr Peter Mee says they are aiming to detect disease before there are clinical presentations. (ABC Rural: Jane McNaughton)
Busy biosecurity labs
Dr Mee works in the AgriBio Lab at Bundoora’s Latrobe University Campus where swab tests from chickens in quarantine zones are delivered and tested daily to inform the government’s biosecurity response.
“It’s been interesting seeing the outbreak and trying to provide that quick turnaround time of diagnostics to support the response, and farmers, in understanding what’s going on here,” he said.
“We do extractions to pull out the nucleic acid, the genetic code, and then we set up our tests that are specific for avian influenza on our machines.
“We routinely get a range of samples from everywhere but recently it’s mainly been those quarantine zones, and also if there’s backyard flocks or areas that look a little bit suspect they’ll come through to us.”
The testing by Ag Vic is gold standard, and efficiencies casting a wider net are being trialled. (ABC Rural: Jane McNaughton)
Research director Grant Rawlins is one of about 150 people who have been on the scene since the outbreak began in May, working from a mobile diagnostics van parked on the farm at the centre of the outbreak.
“Control of highly infectious diseases is all about speed so the closer you can get to where the virus is the less delays you’ve got,” he said.
“This van allows us the organise everything so we get results within 24 hours so we were able to get as close to in front of the virus as you possibly can.”
Dr Grant Rawlins has worked as a veterinarian for 30 years (ABC Rural: Jane McNaughton)
As a result of the outbreak, all 400,000 birds on site at the farm needed to be euthanased.
The veterinarian of 30 years said that although this was not his first response to an emergency animal disease outbreak it was by far the largest.
“Is it complex and stressful? Yes. But you just do it,” he said.
Complex operation
A mobile diagnostics research department has been set up in a van so scientists can quickly test for animal diseases. (ABC Rural: Jane McNaughton)
Victorian broiler sheds can house up to 50,000 chickens each and Dr Rawlins said fatalities were common.
However, in an avian influenza outbreak, all animal deaths were concerning.
“We’ve got a high risk district around here. All of their dead birds are collected by courier and they’re brought to the van so we can swab those birds,” Dr Rawlins said.
Up to 50,000 chickens can be housed in sheds in on Victorian chicken farms. (ABC News: Kyle Harley)
“These are large numbers of birds on these farms and it’s hard to see individuals get sick.
“It’s been quite powerful. We’ve picked up outbreaks before they were clinically apparent.”
Dr Mee said the department had been busy preparing for a large outbreak since Victoria’s last incursion in 2020.
“We did some mock scenarios earlier in the year,” Dr Mee said.
“If there were hanging points that were slowing down processing we could iron out those kinks before we had the real detections.”
Dr Rawlins said the wargaming was also useful out in the field.
“Without the simulations, what we’ve done here would have been much, much more difficult,” he said.
“Those exercises show us holes we were able to fill. When reality hits it operates so much better.”
The diagnostics van is set up to detect disease on-farm. (ABC Rural: Jane McNaughton)
Preparing for bigger threats
As recovery response begins to conclude, government and industry have the looming threat of a more contagious strain of bird flu that has wreaked havoc overseas which could be in Australia as soon as this spring.
Dr Rawlins said he was confident the team could rise to the challenge.
“After we’ve done this work basically it’s the same sort of thing,” he said.
“There will be a lot more interaction with human health and wildlife, but as far as we’re concerned the systems are pretty much the same whatever emergency animal disease comes in.”
Agriculture Victorian vans and trucks are on site at an egg farm near Meredith to help detect disease. (ABC Rural: Jane McNaughton)
Trails are underway in a bid to detect higher volumes of disease at earlier stages.
Dr Mee said although PCR testing was the gold standard it was a labour-intensive exercise to swab test individual birds, so they are trialling the air quality testing of locations such as chicken sheds for disease.
The technology is being developed alongside tests to detect “high volume samples” of viruses that can affect humans, such as COVID.
Airborne disease detecting devices are being used in trials. (ABC Rural: Jane McNaughton)
“We want to see if we can detect it before there are clinical presentations on an animal,” Dr Mee said.
“It’s trying to sample a larger number of animals to potentially capture it earlier and provide that earlier warning that could go to farmers and industry bodies to advise a disease could be circulating in an area.”
The clean up and testing of the affected farms will continue for a number of months so Victoria can declare “proof of freedom” and resume normal trading conditions.
