Bird flu culling 'risks wiping out SA's ostriches'

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Addressing the AMT Agricultural Outlook Conference in Pretoria‚ he said it did not make business sense for the government to insist on a method proven to be ineffective‚ as all birds could carry the virus. Therefore‚ he said‚ targeting only ostriches to be culled was "mind-boggling".

More than 43‚000 ostriches have been culled in SA since the H5N2 bird flu virus was detected in April last year.

Janovsky said the crisis facing the ostrich industry had raised the prices of hides and feathers tremendously. Some farmers had reported birds being plucked overnight by criminals wanting to take advantage of the high prices for feathers‚ which are "as good as gold".

"Farmers should not yet plan to walk out of this industry‚ despite the flu disaster‚" he said. "While it would take some time to recover‚ there is a lot of money to be made due to the demand."

Janovsky also cautioned against panicking over rising food prices as a result of high international maize prices. He said SA still expected to harvest sufficient quantities of maize for local consumption‚ which would go a long way to thwarting or reducing the impact of global price changes.

Johan van den Berg‚ climatologist at Santam Agriculture‚ said farmers expected a loss of about 15% on this year's harvest due to drought in some parts of the country.

He did not specify which crops would be affected‚ but advised farmers to have multicrop risk insurance for the coming years as SA was facing an 80% chance of entering the El Niño climate pattern of 2012-13‚ with higher Indian Ocean cyclones moving moist air towards the east.