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A week ago, we told you about the difficult situation facing poultry farmers of Spanish Lookout who had to kill off 60,000 of their birds which were infected with avian influenza. They agreed to basically dump 3 million dollars' worth of investment out of an abundance of caution because they agreed that the general public shouldn't be exposed to a potential public health risk.

Well, that action has put a financial hurting on those farmers, and while we were in Spanish Lookout, we approached several farmers to speak with us about the difficulties of that decision to comply. They all directed us to the designated spokesperson, Orlando Habet, who up until a few days ago, was out of the country. Well, we finally got an opportunity to speak with Habet today at the PUP's Petrocaribe protest, and he described to us the farmers' perspective of this crisis they are trying to recover from:

Orlando Habet – Spokesperson, Belize Poultry Association

"A little over 60,000 birds have been depopulated, and if were only the broilers, which are the meat birds, it wouldn't be too bad. The problem is that half of those are breeders, which are the birds that lay the egg that go to the hatchery, to produce those chicks that will grow into the birds for the meat that we eat. It has affected the industry severely. It has in the past two weeks, apparently, been slowing down because we do not have many new flocks that have turned out to be positive (for the virus). However, the industry has lost over 3 million dollars, as you have mentioned. And in any given situation, in Spanish Lookout alone, if in a six-weeks cycle, there is a potential for a loss of over 6 million dollars if all the birds were depopulated in a 6 weeks cycle. We anticipate that because the Government has taken the decision along with the industry, that there will be no vaccination, at least up to now, that the option that has been chosen is the depopulation, so that those birds do not reach the market at all, and neither do the eggs. We can see that there is a there is a potential problem with supply, if we do not get the other producers in the north to speed up their protection, then Spanish Lookout will not be ale to supply their customers, possibly in the near future. There is the possibility of the requirement for some importation, but we are trying to move away from that as soon as possible."

Daniel Ortiz

" Will that affect the price in the medium term that people pay for pounds per poultry?"

Orlando Habet

"Up to now it hasn't, but there is no way of telling. Hopefully it doesn't, however, from the industry side, it hasn't gone up. We don't know and cannot control what happens at the supermarket level."

The action has reportedly yielded results, which are welcomed by the farmers, since the spread of the virus is contained for now.

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