KINGSTON, Jamaica — The complete restoration of the country’s poultry industry post Hurricane Melissa will take some time as the Government prioritises safety amid outbreaks of avian influenza (bird flu) regionally, according to Agriculture Minister Floyd Green.

“We’re not going to rush the importation of live birds, but we’re exploring it. Clearly, we have to be very careful in relation to bird flu, avian influenza. Once it emerged in the region, we started to engage our main players around the protocols to ensure that we keep bird flu out of Jamaica. Now that it is very close by, being in Cayman, we have re-engaged those players,” he explained while speaking to the Jamaica Observer Press Club.

Egg farmers, while in full support of egg importation, had previously expressed hesitance regarding the importation of live birds to Observer Online. The minister explained that the Veterinary Services Division has already done consultations to ensure that importers are adhering to the protocols and putting in stricter measures.

“So in terms of sourcing live birds, [they] would have to fill all of those protocols,” he said.

Some birds have been purchased by the Government to assist backyard farmers struggling after the impact of Hurricane Melissa, in which over 1.1 million layer and broiler birds were lost, impacting farmers at all levels.

“For broiler [birds] we started that distribution actually today,” the minister said Tuesday. “So we’ve already procured about 100,000 birds and we’re going to target some of the hard hit parishes… Backyard farming for chicken is something that a lot of our rural families use. The layers will take a little time,” he said.

While help is on the way for backyard poultry farmers, Green, in addressing concerns from medium and large scale egg farmers said the Government and Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) are prioritising financial assistance.

“Larger farmers need significant financial intervention; we’re going to be working with the DBJ to provide them with that sort of support. The good thing is that most of those egg farmers are well established, have ready markets, have good record keeping because they treat with hotels or the top retailers. So I think as we work together, we’ll be able to get them some support through that,” he explained.

Regarding immediate actions to increase poultry availability locally, the minister said: “I met with our main poultry players last week. We are trying to see how they can ramp up production. We’ve always had a backlog, and it has got worse. They have committed to expansion of some of their hatcheries.”

Green said in addition to this, the large-scale poultry farmers are also considering using the facilities of smaller operators to raise layer hens.

“They are using the infrastructure of the players to grow all the birds. So in other words they would be limited by their capacity, how many houses they have to grow out on layers. Now they are expanding their capacity by, if [this person] is a major player, saying to [them], ‘Alright we are going to grow the birds in your area and then you just pay for those birds.”

Added Green, “It should shorten the time significantly and expand the capacity. So we are looking at novel models to see how we can get it back up as quickly as possible.”

The minister reiterated the caution with which the Government was approaching importation.

“Everything that we do as a small island, we have to look at the threat of disease. Sometimes people say, ‘Boy things take long and you have to go through a lot of bureaucracy’, but we’ve seen a complete wipe out of things [before]. We’ve seen our citrus industry hasn’t rebounded from citrus greening, so we have to be careful,” Green said.