Two leaders of the Mexican egg industry have spoken of their "nightmare" after an estimated 25 million laying birds were lost in an outbreak of avian influenza.
Cesar de Anda (pictured) and Sergio Chavez told delegates at the London conference of the International Egg Commission (IEC) how the virus had devastated egg units in Jalisco - the state where most of Mexico's eggs are produced. "It was a very aggressive virus," said Cesar. "In a matter of days an infected farm was gone. It was a nightmare. I have been in the egg business all my life and it is the first time I have experienced anything like this. One day I just broke down in tears. It was unbelievable."
Conference delegates had earlier heard from Jorge Rueda of the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture. He explained how the virus struck on June 18 in Jalisco, where 55 per cent of all the country's eggs are produced. For Mexico, it quickly became a crisis. The country has the highest consumption of eggs of anywhere in the world and is one of the world's major egg producers - turning out 2.5 million tonnes of eggs every year. Jorge Rueda explained how an action plan was quickly put in place to seal off potentially affected areas and prevent the virus spreading. Within 24 hours scientists had established that the cause of the infection was the H7 highly pathogenic avian influenza.
Cesar de Anda praised local producers for their "very responsible" decision to cull laying birds to try to eradicate the virus, even though the producers had still not managed to secure any final agreement on compensation from the Government. "Even without support from the Government, because we still don't know that the Government will help us, the local producers decided to kill the birds. 75 per cent of the birds that were lost were sacrificed. Only 25 per cent of the birds that were lost were killed by the virus. The decision that the producers took at the time was to kill the birds faster than the virus. That was a very tough decision. Meetings and meetings and meetings and meetings, two times a day, three times a day in the local association to take decisions on how to face the problem and how to kill the birds prior to the virus."
His colleague Sergio Chavez told IEC delegates that there were 80 million birds in the state of Jalisco. Some 60 million of them were in the affected zone. Cesar de Anda said that, unofficially, 25 million birds were lost. The financial loss could be as high as 650 American dollars, said Cesar, who said that the outbreak and consequent loss of so many layers had resulted in a shortage of eggs. "It was called a national emergency because of the shortage of eggs," said Cesar, who said that in a country of 150 million people, many of them short of money, eggs were a particularly important part of the diet.
He said that Mexico had sought to import eggs from elsewhere, although they were not easy to obtain and prices had gone up and up. However, he publicly thanked colleagues in the United States for helping to provide supplies to fill some of the gaps on the Mexican egg market. By January next year domestic production should be much higher again, he said, and it was hoped that by April or May next year production would be back to normal levels.
As for the Mexican egg producers, he said that industry leaders were still in discussion with the Government of Mexico in an attempt to formulate some kind of compensation for the losses producers had suffered. He said the results of those discussions were awaited, although one good thing to come out of the crisis was the realisation of just how important the egg industry was to Mexico. "Egg protein is one of the most important parts of the diet. We even had the president talking about it," said Cesar.
The infection, itself, was finally brought under control through the development of a vaccine and the start of a mass vaccination programme. Scientists managed to develop the vaccine from a wild duck in which the virus had been discovered in 2009. In Mexico a system operates in which members of the public are encouraged to hand in dead wild birds they find for examination. As a result of this, scientists produced 139 million vaccines. Some 53 million unused doses were now being held in a central bank as a precaution against future outbreaks, said Jorge Rueda.
He said that as well as maintaining the vaccine bank, Mexican authorities were also improving defences against future outbreaks by strengthening movement controls, increasing bio security, improving epidemiology and introducing better surveillance. He said that the recent outbreak was thought to have been caused by an infected wild duck. Monitoring was still being carried out, but the outbreak was now believed to be under control and not a single case had been found outside the state of Jalisco, he said.
The vaccination programme was due to end in November or December this year, although the date could well be brought forward to October. The last vaccinated bird would be eliminated by the end of 2013, he said.
