Kitchen Garden Forum

I was just wondering what happens to the manure out of the poultry houses, when the poultry has had Avian bird flu! Had a very quick look but, couldn’t find an answer….

Let's hope it doesn't end up in the garden centres for sale!!

I found something from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, that says the virus was found to survive up to 8 weeks in dry & wet faeces at 4C. But whose going to get close enough to check the temp or what the survival rate is at other temps? I suspect from this that when they cull the birds they probably dig out all the manure & burns it with culled fowl.

That’s what I was hoping, Westi, but couldn’t find a definitive answer, so thank you for looking.

Wish some of the farmers were still on the forum as they would have got the full information from the government direct!

It's quite worrying to think about some of these issues because I suspect with so many cost pressures these days I suspect many of these processors will be very tempted to cut corners with devastating effects further down the food chain.
Afraid I'm enough of a realist to believe it's almost certain to happen and sooner or later we'll be reading of some unfortunate happenings in the press.

I suspect relying on your own supervised compost supply will soon be the only way of ensuring you have untainted crops. We've been there with tainted manure in the past.

I believe our County Council has a high heat processing depot for all green bin material which is subsequently sold to the public as compost but I've no idea how efficient it is at eliminating any toxins or infections which may have been contained in the material.