We do seem to have dodged a bullet with poultry this year. Hopefully the higher temperatures and drier weather next week will see it off.
Let's hope so.
My big concern is that I've been tracking the temperature ranges where H5N8 outbreaks have occurred and generally over the past few months they've been in the 10-30C range and not in the colder temperatures you'd normally expect for Avian Influenza transmission.
The most recent outbreak was in Yambol, Bulgaria, with temperatures ranging between roughly 10-20C. Similar temperature ranges applied to the recent outbreaks in Italy, South Africa and Saudi Arabia and many more.
The possibility that's bothering me, that is getting very little attention, is that the virus is incredibly adaptable and may have already adapted to spreading in warmer temperatures. Let's not forget that the last outbreak of H5N8 in the UK occurred in June.
DEFRA are quite right to point out that we're better situated to avoid infection spreading from mainland Europe but the possibility remains that we may have dormant mutated H5N8 that will be activated by the warmer temperatures that are about to arrive.
I suppose its pointless speculating as we are about to find out anyway but the DEFRA analyst's may have missed a trick here and the risk of H5N8 showing up in the warmer weather could turn out to be higher than they've suggested.
As usual the only protection we have is good biosecurity but from personal experience that is patchy at best when looking at small flocks.
Last year the NFU president Meurig Raymond was hinting at tougher measures, maybe even trying to stop people keeping a few birds. He's left now but I've since seen a hardening of attitudes at the NFU. If we get another round of outbreaks with most of the sources being small holdings then keeping poultry at all might be under threat.
This two minute clip from 2017 is a pretty good illustration of where they are coming from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr5F8PPdabI&t=1s