Abstract
BackgroundHighly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses have had devastating effects on poultry industries worldwide, and there is concern about the potential for HPAI outbreaks in the poultry industry in Great Britain (GB). Critical to the potential for HPAI to spread between poultry premises are the connections made between farms by movements related to human activity. Movement records of catching teams and slaughterhouse vehicles were obtained from a large catching company, and these data were used in a simulation model of HPAI spread between farms serviced by the catching company, and surrounding (geographic) areas. The spread of HPAI through real-time movements was modelled, with the addition of spread via company personnel and local transmission.ResultsThe model predicted that although large outbreaks are rare, they may occur, with long distances between infected premises. Final outbreak size was most sensitive to the probability of spread via slaughterhouse-linked movements whereas the probability of onward spread beyond an index premises was most sensitive to the frequency of company personnel movements.ConclusionsResults obtained from this study show that, whilst there is the possibility that HPAI virus will jump from one cluster of farms to another, movements made by catching teams connected fewer poultry premises in an outbreak situation than slaughterhouses and company personnel. The potential connection of a large number of infected farms, however, highlights the importance of retaining up-to-date data on poultry premises so that control measures can be effectively prioritised in an outbreak situation.
Highlights
Pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses have had devastating effects on poultry industries worldwide, and there is concern about the potential for Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks in the poultry industry in Great Britain (GB)
In particular we considered how far catching teams and slaughterhouse vehicles travelled between premises, as it was shown in [10] that this had a large impact on the potential size of an HPAI outbreak
There is no overlap between poultry companies
Summary
Pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses have had devastating effects on poultry industries worldwide, and there is concern about the potential for HPAI outbreaks in the poultry industry in Great Britain (GB). The existence of the animal movement licensing scheme and cattle tracing system in Great Britain (GB), for which the identification and movements of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, deer and horses, must be recorded [5], allows for the reconstruction and analysis of the network of contacts in order to predict the spread of infectious disease across these industries. This is not the case for the poultry. Due to the increase in the number and types of movements made on to and off production farms and partly due to increased exposure of birds to the environment in the production sector, it is here where diseases such as AIV have the opportunity to enter a farm, rendering the production sector the focus of this study
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