Everyone has a certain amount of uncertainty. Accidents, medical issues, personal issues all can arise without any warning. The pheasant industry has the same list of unknowns that other agricultural enterprises have. Crop farmers have drought and prices out of their control. Beef and hog producers have input cost and demand fluctuations. We live in an uncertain world.
I’ve been running MacFarlane Pheasants for 36 years now, and the uncertainty I’ve felt over the past 6 months tops any previous “anxiety episode”. We all know that any perception of control we perceive is really quite an illusion. Taking into account our lack of control, Avian Influenza (A.I.) has injected a level of just complete total lack of control.
We read the myriad biosecurity briefs sent our way, and institute the recommended biosecurity steps on our farm. We hose off the tires of all incoming vehicles. Footbaths, coveralls, booties, disinfectants, the list goes on and on. We are trying to control what most likely is out of our control.
Does everyone get it that our birds are outside? We read the recommendations of “shower in, shower out”. I just read an article on how to bird proof your building. So many of the recommended steps just seem meaningless for our situation.
Realistically if through our protocols and safeguards we prevent an outbreak of A.I. on our farm, the reality is, if there is an outbreak elsewhere in Wisconsin, Canada will embargo Wisconsin poultry. Canada will embargo Wisconsin poultry regardless if the Wisconsin outbreak is hundreds of miles from our farm. And if there is an outbreak of AI in Minnesota, Canada will prevent us from traveling through Minnesota on our way to delivering birds to Alberta.
Each state in the U.S. has a State Veterinarian. Each State Veterinarian’s interest is to protect the animals in their state. With protection in mind, some State Veterinarians may attempt to block the free movement of poultry in the event of an A.I. outbreak. One can’t really blame a State Vet for wanting to protect the poultry industry within their state. But again, as in the Canada situation, there could be an outbreak of A.I. hundreds of miles from our farm, yet still in Wisconsin, which could lead to other states prohibiting or restricting the movement of pheasants from our farm being shipped into their state.
So not just an outbreak of A.I. on our farm, but an outbreak of A.I. in the upper Midwest leads to uncertainty. I’ll feel better once we get to November 1st.
