08/08/2026
‼️ WARNING LONG POST INCOMING -
H5 Avian Influenza 🐓🐣
Over the past few weeks, The Farm has been contacted by media outlets across the country regarding the threat of H5 avian influenza and what it could mean for South Australian poultry producers.
We absolutely support strong biosecurity. We should already be practising it, and every poultry producer has a responsibility to protect their birds and the broader industry.
But you cannot tell a free-range farmer tomorrow that thousands of birds suddenly need to be housed indoors without asking where that infrastructure is going to come from or who is going to pay for it!
So here are my more formal thoughts, while I've had time to process the situation.
SOUTH AUSTRALIAN POULTRY PRODUCERS NEED BIOSECURITY SUPPORT — NOT UNFUNDED MANDATES!
The Farm - Clarendon as a South Australian poultry producer are calling on the State Government to work with industry and provide meaningful financial support for biosecurity infrastructure before considering ANY mandatory confinement of free-range poultry in response to the threat of H5 avian influenza.
While the increased attention is understandable, H5 avian influenza is not a new global issue. It has been circulating internationally and affecting poultry industries overseas for years.
Australian poultry producers should already be practising strong biosecurity, and protecting our flocks must remain a shared priority between farmers, industry and government.
Until appropriate support is available, any additional confinement measures should be VOLUNTARY and risk-based rather than imposed as an un-funded blanket mandate, and quiet frankly a knee jerk reaction.
Government should also be working directly with commercial egg producers, free-range farmers, heritage poultry breeders, veterinarians and industry bodies to develop solutions that are practical at farm level.
Too often farmers are asked:
“What is the solution?”
My message is simple.
Stop asking farmers to carry the entire solution themselves.
Come to the table.
Work with us.
Fund the infrastructure required to strengthen South Australia's biosecurity before an outbreak occurs, rather than waiting until producers are in crisis.
However, the answer cannot simply be to place another unfunded requirement on farmers!!!
For many South Australian free-range and pasture-based poultry producers, being told to suddenly house all birds indoors would require substantial new infrastructure, sheds, fencing, ventilation, feeding systems, additional water infrastructure, bedding, quarantine areas and increased labour.
For some farms, those facilities simply do not exist.
And for many producers, including ourselves, the cost of constructing them at short notice would be financially impossible.
Any mandatory housing or lockdown order without significant government assistance has the potential to break already stretched poultry businesses.
Farmers are already dealing with escalating feed costs, labour shortages, interest rates, insurance, infrastructure costs, regulatory requirements and the everyday pressures associated with running agricultural businesses.
We are maxed out in every sense of the word, financially, physically and mentally.
If the South Australian Government determines that additional infrastructure is necessary to protect the broader poultry industry and the State's biosecurity, then government must be prepared to invest alongside producers.
South Australia has demonstrated that substantial financial assistance can be mobilised when an environmental or agricultural crisis threatens industries and communities, including the recently announced $160 million 'Algal Bloom Support Response'.
The poultry industry deserves the same willingness to come to the table.
If government wants South Australian egg and poultry producers to rapidly change their production systems in the interests of statewide biosecurity, then there needs to be a dedicated 'Avian Influenza Biosecurity and Infrastructure Fund' available to producers.
That funding could assist farms to establish:
• Covered or enclosed poultry housing
• Secure outdoor and covered ranging areas
• Wild-bird exclusion netting
• Quarantine facilities
• Wash-down and disinfection stations
• Secure feed and water systems
• Improved fencing and vermin control
• Ventilation and environmental controls
• Farm biosecurity upgrades
• Emergency disease-response infrastructure
Prevention is considerably better than response.
South Australian poultry farmers are willing to do their part.
But protecting an entire industry cannot be the financial responsibility of individual farmers alone.
If stronger biosecurity is in the interests of South Australia, then South Australia needs to invest in it.
Biosecurity is everyone's responsibility. The cost of protecting an entire South Australian industry should not fall solely on individual farmers.
Righto, I've said my piece, now onto the next farm job to sort out.
