The couple were left with no choice but to have their 5,000 chickens culled (Image: Jerry Saunders/Orchard Organic Farm)
A poultry farmer has warned that the avian flu insurance system is “not designed” to support small businesses, as he looks for another job after having all his hens killed.
A prevention zone was declared for the whole of Great Britain in January after the country’s largest-ever rise in infections, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of birds. Housing orders – preventing hens from roaming freely – are also in place in 10 regions.
With farmers already scrambling to prepare for the Government’s introduction of a 20% on agricultural land from April 1, the industry could be facing an existential threat, warned Jerry Saunders, 54, who lost “tens of thousands of pounds” after two of his birds were diagnosed with the disease last month.
Mr Saunders and his wife Emma were told that the entire hen population of Orchard Organic Farm in Newton Abbot, South would have to be culled as a result – leaving the couple heartbroken and in dire financial straits.
The system for dealing with avian flu outbreaks is “not designed” to support small, family-run businesses, the 54-year-old said. Insurance for free-roaming birds is near-impossible to come by, he added, because they spend so much time outdoors and are more vulnerable to infections than their intensively farmed counterparts.
: [REPORT]
“It’s much easier for the big poultry farmers who supply supermarkets to cover their backs,” he added. “It couldn’t be any more devastating for us, really.”
While the Government offers a sliding scale of compensation for the healthy hens culled to ensure disease control, Mr Saunders said this measure was also designed to suit large conglomerates rather than small farms such as his.
“The sliding scale starts with young, healthy hens, which you get a reasonable amount of compensation for, and tapers down to almost nothing once they’ve reached a certain age,” he said.
“We take pride in our hens being allowed to roam free and they live longer than supermarket birds. But it means the amount of money we get amounts to less than half of what it would cost to restock if we went down that route.”
Unable to pay the “incredibly high” cost of a deep-clean of the farm, the couple would have to put it in a 12-month quarantine before even considering repopulating it with birds – leaving them with little choice but to shut up shop and search for other jobs.
It’s a depressing prospect after 15 years of success, Mr Saunders said. He feels lucky to have a former career in engineering and a lorry licence to fall back on. But it’s difficult to focus on the future when he’s still trying to forget the huge number of chickens that he’d helped to bring into the world being culled by men in hazmat suits under a fortnight ago.
The farm was “eerily quiet” after the culling, Mr Saunders said (Image: Jerry Saunders/Orchard Organic Farm)
“It was absolutely horrendous. You can’t be a farmer without caring deeply about your animals. We bred our hens from day-old chicks and reared them all the way through. They were lovely creatures.
“It was extraordinarily sad to walk around the farm the day after they’d been culled. Everything was so eerily quiet and dead.”
Disease control regulations meant that even though Orchard Farm’s hens had been kept in different houses and roamed around separate fields, there was no exemption for any of them from mass destruction. Nor could Mr Saunders avoid shouldering the cost of incinerating over £7,000 of eggs and £5,000 of chicken feed that were also judged to be at risk of infection.
“We argued pretty hard that some of the hen houses were up to half a mile apart,” he said. “But the approach to dealing with it is set up to work for large-scale commercial farms, where all the chickens are packed into a big concrete shed. It’s very inflexible. There’s no allowances for businesses like ours.”
A close friend of the couple set up a GoFundMe page in the days immediately following the culling, which has raised over £30,000. Mr Saunders said he is “incredibly grateful” for the support – but stresses it will only help to dig them out of a short-term financial hole, rather than securing the farm’s long-term future.
“We’ve lost tens of thousands of pounds,” he said. “I can’t bear thinking about a more specific figure than that. The money raised by the fundraiser is a lifesaver, but it will mainly help us to cover the mortgages, insurances and redundancy bills. The true cost is in the loss of the hens.
“The support we’ve got from the community and other farmers has been amazing, but in a way it’s also been one of the hardest things to deal with. I’m trying to keep a stiff upper lip, but when people hug you and say they’re sorry, it just gets harder to keep it all inside.”
Don’t miss… [REPORT] [REPORT] [REPORT]
The couple were left “tens of thousands of pounds” out of pocket (Image: Jerry Saunders/Orchard Organic Farm)
Part of the reason Mr Saunders can’t face going back to square one in 12 months’ time is the lack of protection he’d be offered if some of his flock were infected again.
“All it would take would be another seagull dropping an infected load over the farm, and we’d have to go through all of this for a second time,” he said.
Orchard Farm is a very small enterprise – with three mortgages – and is under the threshold for the inheritance tax changes coming into force on April 1 as a result. But Mr Saunders said the experience has opened his eyes to the lack of a safety net for small farms facing influenza outbreaks and has made him worried that others could be put in even tigher corners than he was.
“If this happened to someone after April 1 who was also having to pay inheritance tax, it would be unimaginably difficult to deal with,” he said. “When you look at it all together, it doesn’t seem like the Government agenda is behind smallscale or family farming.”
The saddest part of the ordeal is the loss of relationships with local people that Orchard Farm has fostered over more than a decade in Newton Abbot, the farmer added, insisting that it has never suffered from a lack of customer demand.
“We’ve always sold every single egg we’ve produced. It’s such a shame that the people who used to come to us will probably now get their eggs from the supermarket instead.”
He also criticised the Government’s lack of communication about the work being done to contain the virus behind the scenes.
“We’re desperately hoping that they’ll be able to develop a vaccine. You want to assume that there is hard work going on in the background, but it doesn’t feel like we’re being kept in the loop.
“The small-scale egg industry is under threat at the moment, but the approach seems to be reactionary rather than preventative.”
A number of senior voices in the industry have also called for more support for small-scale farms, with James Mottershead, chair of the National Farming Union’s poultry board warning of the damaging short and long-term impact of the bird flu outbreaks.
“Avian influenza can put huge emotional and financial strain on farming families,” he said. “Farmers take such care to protect the health and welfare of their birds and it’s devastating to see that compromised.”
The Saunders’ had to pay for over £7,000 worth of eggs to be incinerated (Image: Jerry Saunders/Orchard Organic Farm)
Gary Ford of the British Free Range Egg Producers Association also called on the Government to enforce country-wide housing orders to protect other free range and organic producers from suffering similar fates to Orchard Farm.
“In our view, there is sufficient evidence to extend the housing order across Great Britain,” Mr Ford told Farming Today. “We all want to get ahead of the disease curve [and] we believe a proactive approach is the right way [forward].
“We need to do the right thing by the birds and flocks and the right thing for farmers as well.”
Devon-based food delivery group Riverford, which has worked with Orchard Farm for 15 years, joined the chorus criticising the lack of infrastructural support for small businesses in the sector when they’re hit by such existential threats as a bird flu outbreak.
“[This] is a stark reminder of the enormous risk that many farmers navigate,” a spokesperson said. “We’d like to see more robust support for poultry farmers from the government, with avian flu an ever-increasing risk, and so little by way of security.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We know the devastating impact bird flu has had on farmers and poultry producers which is why we have taken further measures in recent weeks, including introducing housing orders in the most affected areas.
“We have acted quickly to cull all poultry on infected premises to stop the risk of the disease spreading and to protect Britain’s food security. Any premises affected will be paid compensation for all healthy birds that have been culled for disease control purposes.”