Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the impact of the flock depopulation measures carried out by the Animal and Plant Health Agency during the 2022-23 outbreak of avian influenza on bio-security.

Avian influenza, once introduced into a premises, spreads rapidly through birds present. As set out in the Notifiable Avian Disease Control Strategy for Great Britain swift and humane culling of poultry and other captive birds on infected premises coupled with good biosecurity is used to prevent the amplification of avian influenza and subsequent environmental contamination, reduce the risk of disease spread from infected premises and mitigate any public health risk these infected birds may pose. Defra’s disease control measures seek to contain the number of animals that need to be culled, either for disease control purposes or to safeguard animal welfare. Current policy reflects our experience of responding to past outbreaks of exotic animal disease and is in line with international standards of best practice for disease control.

During the 2022/23 outbreak 5.4 million birds have died or been culled and disposed for disease control purposes, a small proportion of overall poultry production (c.20m birds slaughtered for human consumption per week).

At each infected premises the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) carry out veterinary investigations to identify, as far as possible the likely source of infection, and establish how long the disease may have been present on the infected premises together with identifying and investigating potential routes of spread from the premises. We have recently published the 2021/22 highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak which provides a summary of the outcomes of these investigations. The report for 2022/23 will be published in due course.

Epidemiological investigations to date show that the introduction of infection to poultry premises is almost entirely by direct or indirect spread from wild birds and that there has been no transmission between poultry premises apart from where they are located close together and are part of the same integrated company or business, and share staff and equipment. Key findings from these investigations help drive assessment and improvements in biosecurity best practice on poultry and other captive bird premises.