The House: We need to learn to live with bird flu, experts tell MPs

The spread of bird flu is ongoing in New Zealand, and we will have to learn to live with it, officials told MPs this week.

In a briefing to Parliament's Primary Production Committee on Thursday, officials from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and the Department of Conservation (DOC) said the focus would be on surveillance, resilience, and protecting native species and poultry populations, as the number of cases potentially rises.

MPI chief veterinary officer Mary Van Andel told MPs the H5N1 strain of bird flu first emerged in the Northern Hemisphere in 2020 and has since spread around the world, likely arriving in New Zealand via Antarctic and subantarctic seafaring (pelagic) bird species.

Van Andel said although the virus remains a low risk to humans, its spread has resulted in an increasing number of infections in mammals. However sustained mammal-to-mammal transmission remains rare.

This week Australia confirmed local transmission among a population of great crested terns in South Australia.

"This is kind of the pattern that we expect with this disease," Van Andel told MPs, explaining that it was only a matter of time before pelagic seabirds moving through the Southern Ocean brought the virus to New Zealand.

Deputy director-general of Biosecurity New Zealand, Stewart Anderson, told the committee that New Zealand's trade status remains unaffected, but that ultimately H5N1 is a disease the country is likely to have to live with.

"It seems very unlikely that this disease will be able to be eradicated from New Zealand wildlife. That's not what has happened in any other place in the world.

"So we need to focus our efforts on resilience, and on protecting the populations that we are able to, because we can't predict or know how this disease will behave here."

Given that the Primary Production Committee has a heavy agricultural focus, questions arose about the potential economic challenges the virus could pose if the virus spreads further.

With mortality rates approaching around 90-95 percent in some affected species, National MP Suze Redmayne asked whether compensation would be on the cards for poultry farmers, citing the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak as a potential model.

Anderson told Redmayne that was unlikely. "The industry is going to need to live and manage with this, because it'll become an endemic disease, meaning it can't be eradicated. "We won't be seeking to exercise powers under the Biosecurity Act to undertake culling and so on, which means that compensation is not payable."

As the situation is evolving, and with officials continuing to monitor for any increase in local transmission the Primary Production Committee agreed it was likely MPI officials would need to return to Parliament for further updates.

What is a briefing?

Briefings are one of the non-legislative functions available to select committees, allowing MPs to hear directly from officials, experts, and members of the public on an issue or topic of particular interest to the committee. While they can lead to a more formal select committee inquiry, committees are under no obligation to launch one.

You can listen to the audio version of this story by clicking the link near the top of the page.

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