What happens when bird flu hits egg farms?
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For years we managed to avoid it. The H5 strain of the bird flu virus is now taking hold.
Sadly, we do know that once the H5 bird flu is spreading in wildlife and the natural environment, it is not possible to avoid significant losses. which is what we're starting to see now. And so much of our wildlife is at risk. Birds like the emu, cockatoos, galahs. We've got some native parrots as well that are endangered. And then obviously commercial poultry.
It just keeps escalating. Today, epidemiologist Raina McIntyre has studied bird flu for almost 30 years on how the virus could reach poultry and potentially dairy farms with devastating outcomes. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.
Raina, let's start by discussing this moment on Sunday the 14th of June when a vet, Tony Howlett, was walking along a beach in southern Western Australia and she comes across a sick bird. It didn't seem compromised in a respiratory way. It was just skinny and dehydrated. Now she takes it to a wildlife hospital.
We set it up on the examination bench after we'd put our personal protective gear on to have a look at it.
It couldn't stand up. And, well, this is where it all began, really, isn't it?
Yeah, so it was a migratory seabird which had come probably from Heard Island, one of the sub-Antarctic islands that are heavily affected by bird flu. You know, the virus had been in Antarctica before that, so we knew it was always a risk it was going to come through that route from Antarctica. And really, once it reached Heard Island, it was just a matter of time before migratory birds brought it into the mainland.
And just to note, we have had bird flu in Australia before, but not this strain. And it's really worrying, isn't it? Because around the world, it really has had devastating consequences, hasn't it?
It has. You know, we've had multiple outbreaks of H7 type bird flu, which is a different type of bird flu. you know, since the 1970s, but they've got more frequent in recent years, but those outbreaks were controlled. If the poultry was culled, the outbreak came under control and then it went away. But the H5N1, which is the strain, it's a particular mutation of that bird flu that's arose in 2020 and it's spread around the world, it's actually causing a pandemic in birds. And we haven't seen that sporadic pattern with this virus. It's been just continually escalating. It's never gone away. And historically, H5N1 has never come into Australia because there's also this imaginary line between Indonesia and Australia called the Wallace Line.
And invasive species tend not to cross that line. And so we've been protected because the flyways of the waterfowl don't cross Australia. So the ducks, geese, and swans. But now there's a huge number of other birds, including these seabirds that are coming from Antarctica down entirely different routes. than what avian flu used to spread through.
Okay, so for a number of years we did manage to escape this H5N1 strain and last week we learned from the Agriculture Minister, Julie Collins, that the virus is now being transmitted between birds locally, so not just migratory birds.
How did Australia first detect the H5 bird flu incursion on beaches and wildlife?
Some local transmission has occurred between a number of greater crested terns that are resident in South Australia. How significant is that? Yeah, that's really important because once we've got infection of birds like the terns which are present in Australia, they're endemic birds,
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