Efficacy and efficiency of poultry carcass composting using different mechanical mixing equipment for avian influenza outbreaks

Abstract

Background and Aim: Avian influenza (AI) is a viral disease that caused the largest animal disease outbreak in the history of US agriculture. There are several disposal methods of AI infected poultry carcasses available in the US, which include on-site burial, landfill, incineration, rendering, and composting. Of these methods, composting is the most environmentally friendly and poses a low risk for biosecurity. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has developed a comprehensive plan for composting AI infected carcasses. The current protocols have the potential for areas of anaerobic pockets within the windrow due to inadequate mixing and the large carcass size of whole birds. This could lead to ineffective virus neutralization or prolonged composting times and higher resource costs. The purpose of this project was to determine if using a horizontal mixer (HM) wagon to mix composting ingredients or a vertical mixer (VM) wagon to mix and cut up the compositing ingredients is an economical and timely means to accelerate the tissue break-down and obtain optimal temperatures for poultry carcass composting during an AI outbreak.

A review of the animal disease outbreaks and biosecure animal mortality composting systems

“…Avian influenza, also known as bird flu, is a respiratory disease caused by viruses infecting all avian species and can be divided into two groups based on their capacity of generating disease and the severity of the illness they cause: low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) and highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) (Capua and Alexander, 2004;Keaten and Hutchinson, 2017). While LPAI viruses cause mild symptoms in poultry, infections by HPAI (H5N1 or H7N9) can lead to the death of more than 90% of the flock.…”

“…Infections in human often happen due to direct contact with infected poultry. The first human infection occurred in 1997 during an HPAI outbreak in Hong Kong and resulted in 6 fatal cases (Keaten and Hutchinson, 2017;WHO, 2018a). Between 2003 and 2018, 860 H5N1 infections in human were reported, which caused the death of 454 people worldwide (WHO, 2018b).…”

“…Between 2003 and 2018, 860 H5N1 infections in human were reported, which caused the death of 454 people worldwide (WHO, 2018b). An outbreak of AI in domestic poultry can significantly affect global food security as poultry products are the main protein sources in many countries (Keaten and Hutchinson, 2017). HPAI virus does not naturally occur in the U.S.…”

The use of composting for the disposal of African swine fever virus‐infected swine carcasses

“…Nevertheless, each country has varying choices of disposal methods due to the different policies and regulations (Kim et al., 2017). In general, most of these methods do not fulfil essential requirements such as biosecurity, public acceptance, environmentally friendly, economical and high capacity (Costa & Akdeniz, 2019; Keaten & Hutchinson, 2017). On‐farm burial is regarded as the preferred carcasses treatment during outbreaks (Scudamore et al., 2002).…”

Viability of African Swine Fever Virus with the Shallow Burial with Carbon Carcass Disposal Method

“…At present, deep burial, incineration, and composting are often used to dispose of animal carcasses in many countries around the world [8]. However, each of these methods has different advantages and disadvantages [8,9]. Deep burial is capable of disposing of a large number of carcasses, but the decomposition in the burial pit occurs slowly because oxygen is limited and the addition of lime inhibits the activity of microorganism community [10].…”