AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

Saw this on the ABC

Free range encourages bird flu: Barnaby Joyce
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-24/f ... lu/5042392

I don't agree with him

What a dopey theory.
What is he going to do about the tens of millions of free range wild ducks out there?

Thats the LNP for you all dopey

Yep. Next thing they will want the nations cattle housed indoors where they will be safer from an outbreak of exotic disease like foot and mouth disease.

He seems to have a thing about free range chickens at the moment. Vested interests perhaps ?

All of the major political parties kowtow to agribusiness.
What worries me is that it is only a small step from this to go on and claim that hobby poultry keeping poses an unacceptable threat to the poultry industry.

He is complaining specifically about Woolworths moving from cage eggs to free-range only eggs. He would also know that some supermarket chains have promised to move to only free-range pork because of publicity over cruelty in sow stalls. It looks awfully like he's trying to save some buddies some money. Does this man have any conscience at all about cruelty in food production? It doesn't look like it.

I can understand their point, but I think its a case of the media blowing this up and slanting the point towards avian flu and woolworths being a power player in the market.

In this interview they actually clarify that Woolworths is moving to barn laid eggs and away from cage eggs, so what one story tells another one doesn't. Unfortunately with media they can slant it towards whatever point they like and then manipulate the facts to support that point.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-25/v ... ms/5044506

I say bravo to woolworths for making such a move as it will eventually stamp out the caged birds industry if such major players like Woolworths all make this move.

The barn laid eggs are a safer alternative against avian influenza and the poultry industry does need to maintain a safeness against disease in such large numbers of their flocks but still give that level of freeness to the birds so they are able to scratch and flap their wings & just be chickens.

I would rather the eggs that people buy in the super market come from a source such as a barn laid environment than those of caged creulty.

And when I think about it, my chickens are in that term of barn laid, as they are in their house the majority of the day, but the one difference is that I let my girls (& Clyde) out to free range in the arvo.

But, the commercial industry has to be very careful about doing that as they can contract avian flu diseases from ducks and other birds by free ranging.

This is my understanding of what Barneby Joyce is trying to make in the interview, not what Woolworths is doing.
i honestly do not believe they would ever attempt political suicide like that, as there is a lot of poultry lovers in this country, and to try & even propose such moves to stamp out people keeping poultry as a hobby would have the entire country in an uproar and would make world wide news. I think your concerns can be rest assured there would not be a politician that would even try to go there.

I doubt that could ever enforce a ban across australia and how could it be policed?

I am not suggesting that there might be an outright ban. Just more regulation of backyard poultry, more rules and restrictions.
We only have to look at the restrictions on poultry keeping in towns now to see how this can happen. It used to be that poultry in towns were a normal and accepted thing.