Tom
Vilsack said it would be cheaper to set up a national insurance program for
poultry farmers than paying for the flocks that have been ordered destroyed to
prevent the spread of avian influenza.
Vilsack,
who is the United States Secretary of Agriculture, said the government has
already spent $191 million to compensate turkey and chicken farmers whose
flocks have been ordered destroyed.
But
that’s only part of the estimated $700 million the government has spent so far
on the outbreaks.
Congress
took out provisions for a national poultry insurance program when it was
crafting the new five-year farm bill, but Vilsack is asking them to reconsider
now.
The
government has spent $400 million on cleaning up dead birds and disinfecting
and is paying to research and stockpile a bird flu vaccine in case the virus
returns. Vilsack said that makes it the most costly disease outbreak in U.S.
farming history.
The
bird flu killed 48 million birds, mostly turkeys and egg-laying chickens in 15
states as it swept through the Midwest. Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri lost the
most birds.
Vilsack
spoke Tuesday at a bird flu conference in Des Moines, Iowa, where the poultry
industry and agriculture officials are talking about how to make farms more
secure and how to better respond if the virus is again dropped on farms from
waterfowl migrating south this fall.
The
conference was closed to the public and the media except for opening speeches
by Vilsack and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. Organizers said they wanted to ensure
an open discussion of what went wrong and how to improve responses.
“I
do think we’d be better off as a nation if we had for poultry producers a
disaster program similar to what we have for livestock producers,” Vilsack
said.
It
would be less costly to the government than dealing with outbreaks as
individual disasters, he said.
In Canada, two sets of outbreaks have been stopped. One set
was in British Columbia around the Christmas season and the other involved
three Oxford County farms in Ontario this spring.
Marketing boards were instrumental in using their
communications systems to stop the virus from spreading farm to farm. The three farms were all finally cleared from quarantine this week.
It’s thought to come from migrating ducks and geese. That
has the North American poultry industry on edge for when migration south begins
this fall.
