Poultry farmers reluctant to report bird flu

Poultry farmers are likely not to report outbreak of future Avian influenza (bird flu) epidemic following the government’s inability to compensate farmers that had their birds killed as a result of the disease.

The GRAPHIC BUSINESS has gathered that most of the farmers have decided not to report cases of the disease if authorities do not compensate them for the 40,154 birds destroyed in the Greater Accra, Volta and Ashanti regions by the Veterinary Services Directorate (VSD) as part of measures to contain the outbreak.

Forty thousand, one hundred and fifty-four birds, 1,103 crates of eggs and 37 bags of feed have been destroyed since the outbreak was first recorded in May this year. 

The Secretary of the Techiman Poultry Farmers Association, Mr Emmanuel Soglizu, who spoke to the GRAPHIC BUSINESS in Accra, said that the government had not provided the needed support for the creation of awareness of the disease since the outbreak.

“After all, they (government) only know about the disease when we the farmers report it to them; therefore, we are going to advise ourselves,” he said.

He noted that if robust measures were not implemented to halt the spread of the highly pathogenic Avian influenza, H5N1, commonly called bird flu, the industry would collapse.

He, therefore, described the directive of the Ministry of Food and Agricultural (MoFA) restricting the movement of poultry products in the Greater Accra Region as disingenuous; explaining that the disease is airborne and, therefore, preventing the movement of birds alone could not be robust enough to halt its spread.

 Call to entrepreneurship

Mr Soglizu is a poultry farmer at Tuobodom, a town in the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana.

He gave up his managerial position at the Coca-Cola branch in Techiman to start his own poultry farm business in 2009, with the aim of creating a secure job for himself and reducing the unemployment rate in the country.

With an initial investment of GH¢40,000, appealing and smart marketing, it quickly caught on. Today, the business can boast of about 70,000 birds, as well as three permanent employees.

 Create market for the sector

Comparing the Ghanaian poultry industry to their foreign counterparts, Mr Soglizu noted that poultry farming was big business in the western world, with job creation high among the list of benefits derived from the sector.

According to him, market for eggs in the northern part of the country is mostly within neighbouring countries such as Niger and Burkina-Faso and that when there are political instabilities in these countries the farmers find it difficult to access that market.

“About the broilers, we are challenged to produce on a larger scale but because of the importation of frozen chicken into the country, we are unable to produce more for the fear that we will not get the market,” he said.

“If the government could issue a directive to compel the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) directorate to feed the school pupil with an egg per day, this would create a big market for the poultry industry,” he suggested.

Currently, the programme feeds about 1,728,682 children in beneficiary schools in the country.

Woes of the industry

He said the Techiman Poultry Farmers Association had the capacity to produce over 1,600,000 broilers and layers if they received the needed attention.

“The Techiman Poultry Farmers Association is capable of providing chicken for the northern part of Ghana if the broiler project is extended to us,” he said.

He said the farmers found it difficult to get access to credit facilities from the banks to expand their farms because of unavailability of market for the industry.

“Even though poultry feed such as maize is produced locally, it is very expensive for the farmers to purchase it,” he added.