May 11, 2006

Dear Chairman Chambliss and Ranking Member Harkin,

We are writing to express our concern about the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s draft plan to respond to the arrival of avian flu in the United States, the subject of your hearing today.  We represent consumers, family farmers, and advocates for animal welfare. All of these groups have an interest in a thorough, effective and transparent federal response in the event that avian influenza is detected in this country.  While we appreciate the efforts of the USDA and other federal agencies to combat avian influenza abroad and to prepare for its arrival here, we are concerned that the USDA’s draft plan has several major flaws.

1.  The plan downplays the risk of industrialized poultry operations.

The Senate Agriculture Committee should examine the plan’s evident bias towards poultry operations that keep birds indoors.  The response plan summary repeatedly states that it is preferable to raise poultry inside buildings.  This position ignores the vulnerability to disease created by keeping tens of thousands of genetically similar birds in tight quarters.  The agency’s emphasis on the supposed advantage in bio-security offered by confinement operations is overstated and ignores the many routes by which the virus can still find its way to these flocks, including wild birds or other animals that get into poultry houses, the movement of people, equipment, feed, and other materials between poultry operations, and the necessary intake of fresh air into the buildings. 

The portrayal of avian flu in the media, and in the draft response plan being presented by USDA, is that the virus has primarily afflicted backyard and outdoor poultry flocks.  This corresponds to a focus on wild migratory birds as the vector responsible for spreading the disease.  Yet outbreaks have occurred in large confinement poultry operations in Laos, Egypt, Nigeria, Vietnam, Russia, Cambodia, India, Japan and the Ukraine.  In some cases, a plausible explanation for the spread of the disease is the movement of equipment, manure (used as fertilizer and an ingredient in animal feed) and chickens themselves, through legal and illegal channels.  Yet contact between wild migratory birds and outdoor poultry flocks is often presented as the sole explanation for the virus’ spread. 

We urge the members of the Agriculture Committee to instruct the USDA to investigate the role of large confinement poultry operations in this country’s vulnerability to avian flu.  Additionally, we urge you to ask the agency to reevaluate its assumption that confined poultry are somehow safer from the virus than outdoor flocks. We also believe that the USDA should develop an avian influenza surveillance program with mandatory implementation for selected confined poultry feeding operations.

2.    The plan could have devastating impacts on family farmers and producers of outdoor poultry.

The USDA’s response plan is necessarily focused on the structure of government teams that would be mobilized to deal with the discovery of avian flu.  The plan implies that critical decisions such as the use of vaccination, the extent of areas subject to quarantine, and the timing of culling efforts will be determined on a case-by-case basis. This leaves us to rely on agency officials’ media statements to learn what the agency is thinking about the vital next steps in containing the disease.  One example comes from APHIS Administrator Dr. DeHaven, who told the Associated Press on April 19th that flocks could be culled even before test results were known and that he considered free-range and other outdoor poultry to present the greatest risk of the disease.  This creates the impression that those in charge of the USDA’s response have already decided that if avian flu arrives, they are coming for free-range and outdoor poultry first, regardless of whether or not the disease is actually present in those flocks.  USDA’s emphasis on discouraging outdoor poultry operations is more than a little disturbing to those whose farms rely on keeping their poultry outdoors.

We ask the members of the Agriculture Committee to require USDA to document the impact its response plan could have on producers of free-range, organic and outdoor poultry.  Additionally, we urge the members of the committee to require USDA to clearly communicate to producers the procedural steps that must take place before culling of flocks begins. The agency should consider modifying its plan so that culling does not begin before test results prove that the disease is present.

3.     The plan does not include compensation for all types of producers.

The process for compensating producers for destroyed flocks does not appear to cover the contract growers that have put a significant amount of capital into their poultry operations.  The plan states that “[t]he USDA pays compensation to the owner when it takes or destroys an asset.”  Therefore, contract growers that do not own the birds will get nothing for the flock destroyed and time spent without flocks. The U.S. poultry industry is dominated by arrangements in which farmers raise birds that do not belong to them.  These farmers are saddled with large amounts of debt from building and improving poultry houses.  In the event that their flock must be culled to prevent the spread of avian flu, contract growers who raise poultry owned by another party must also be included in provisions for compensation.

The methods for determining the value of destroyed flocks should be based on the average value of the last six flocks plus any supplemental adjustments that would normally be paid within the time frame or on flocks involved if the flock is over three weeks old.  Growers should also be paid for their time without flocks.   The compensation for the time without flocks beyond the flock that was destroyed should be computed using the historical average daily income for a grower multiplied by the number of days exceeding the typical layout period between flocks (time between flocks moved for slaughter to time of placement of new flocks for raising) multiplied by 80%.  The timing of the payment should be based upon the normal payment schedule.

The government should directly cover all the associated costs of the depopulation of the flock in a humane and environmentally sound way.  This includes disposal of carcasses and waste (manure), any method used to sanitize and/or rid the poultry facilities of disease including any permitting fees, any alteration, modification, or destruction of the farm property, and costs for the poultry facilities to be returned to their original condition prior to the depopulation of the flock.

Additionally, the plan does not consider the impact that the response to avian flu could have on small processors, if quarantines or depopulation eliminate their supply of poultry. 

4.    The plan does not specify how humane euthanasia will be achieved.

The response plan summary states "[h]umane standards [for euthanasia] are defined in the most current Report on Euthanasia of the American Veterinary Medical Association.” Unfortunately, the latest such report was published in 2001. Thankfully the report also says "APHIS would also consider new humane depopulation methods resulting from future research or as described in the World Organization for Animal Health manual or by resolution from AVMA, USAHA or NIAA." We urge the committee to instruct USDA to at least follow the latest 2005 World Organization for Animal Health recommendations. 

The agency should consider using controlled atmosphere killing using inert gas mixtures. Any method that does not require restraint or handling is preferred, such as the introduction of non-aversive gasses into sealed broiler chicken sheds or for egg-laying hens, the induction of anesthesia through anesthetics added to the feed or water followed by killing.

5.   The plan does not include protections for workers.

The response plan does not address the risk faced by workers in the poultry industry. Those who handle live poultry and process poultry should be included in recommendations for protecting potentially exposed populations, such as first responders and agency personnel.  Appropriate personal protection equipment should be provided to all workers exposed to potentially infected birds and contaminated surfaces.  Additionally, poultry industry workers and others who may identify sick birds or report suspected cases of avian flu should be covered by whistle blower protections.

6. The plan does not include ways to reduce risk from movement of poultry products.

The risk for spreading avian flu from movement of poultry products, through legal channels as well as smuggling, and the use of poultry litter as a fertilizer and feed ingredient are not given much weight in the USDA’s plan for preventing the entry of avian flu into the U.S. The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization recommends a ban on feeding poultry litter in countries infected with or at risk of infection from avian influenza.  We believe that the U.S. should follow this recommendation.

Additionally, the Agriculture Committee should instruct USDA to examine the potential for restricting the movement and sale of poultry litter as a way to prevent the spread of the disease, and to examine what disposal methods for poultry waste would prevent the least risk for spreading avian flu.

USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service recently approved the import of processed poultry products from the People's Republic of China (see 71 FR 20867-20871).  While the rule adopted by FSIS would prohibit the PRC from using its own domestic poultry for processing (the rule states that only poultry from the United States or from a country that is already approved to ship poultry to the United States can be processed in the PRC), there are no guarantees that this is going to occur.  USDA should be concerned that the PRC has had numerous outbreaks of H5N1 among its poultry flocks. And while the rule prohibits the PRC from using its own domestic poultry for processing, USDA inspectors will not be permanently stationed in exporting facilities to ensure that this condition is met and that poultry is being cooked at the proper temperatures at all times, which is necessary to kill the H5N1 virus or other food borne pathogens. 

There have been documented cases of smuggling of illegal poultry products from the PRC into the United States over the past year.  Since smuggling of poultry has been identified as a probable vector for the transmission of the H5N1 from country to country, the rule-making process for the processed poultry imports from China should have been terminated last fall.  It seems counterproductive to the government’s efforts to try to contain the possible introduction of H5N1 into the U.S. to open the doors to poultry products from a country that has had a history of this disease.

We ask the committee to instruct the USDA to examine the risk of avian flu introduction presented by the approval of imported processed poultry products from the People’s Republic of China. 
 

We thank the committee for holding a hearing on this important issue, and hope you question USDA about its plan to ensure that response to avian flu will serve the interests of all producers, as well as consumers and animals.  Please contact any of our groups if we can provide information or testimony for future efforts on this issue.


Sincerely,


Community Nutrition Institute

Farm Sanctuary

Food & Water Watch

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

National Family Farm Coalition

Rural Advancement Foundation International - USA

Sustainable Table

The Humane Society of the United Sates



Cc:     Senator Richard G. Lugar
    Senator Thad Cochran
    Senator Mitch McConnell
    Senator Pat Roberts
    Senator Jim Talent   
    Senator Craig Thomas
    Senator Rick Santorum
    Senator Norm Coleman
    Senator Mike Crapo
    Senator Charles E. Grassley
    Senator Patrick J. Leahy
    Senator Kent Conrad
    Senator Max Baucus
    Senator Blanche L. Lincoln
    Senator Debbie A. Stabenow
    Senator Ben Nelson
    Senator Mark Dayton
    Senator Ken Salazar