Westmeath farm wary of potential impact of bird flu

Agriculture Minister, Martin Heydon, has announced heightened poultry biosecurity regulations to protect poultry and captive birds from bird flu.

The new biosecurity regulations will require all flock keepers to apply specific biosecurity measures for poultry and other captive birds. The minister said the regulations had been introduced to protect poultry from the risk of bird flu. One of the key measures is to prevent wild birds gaining access to poultry and captive birds and also to their environment.

“Hopefully it won't impact our farm,” Kenneth Greene of Greene Farm foods said of the measures.

Green Farm is a long established wholesale poultry products from the family farm in Rockfield, Clonaboy, Rathowen. The award winning producer has been farming and caring for the land using traditional farming practices and methods over five generations.

The producer is conscious of the impact an avian flu outbreak would have on business. According to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) there is an “increasing risk to poultry and captive birds during the higher-risk period for avian influenza”.

A total of 41 wild birds have now tested positive for the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) virus in the first nine months of 2025. Outbreaks of HPAI have been reported this month in a large poultry flock in Omagh, Tyrone, Northern Ireland, and in a captive bird flock in Cork at Fota Wildlife Park.

Kenneth spoke of the importance of maintaining vigilance in the face of such outbreaks: “We're constantly talking to the department. The recent case in Fota Wildlife Park, and concerns about migrating birds is something we have to monitor, if it gets into domestic flocks, or backyard flocks then the department will issue housing orders.”

Such a directive would impact on the Rockfield operation: “We're obviously all free range, free range eggs and free range hens. We're beside an area here in Glenlock, where there's a lot of migrating birds; Whooper swans and geese. It's a protected area. We have to be careful about monitoring our flock.”

That consideration is at the heart of the farm: “As with all livestock it needs a lot of attention. Protection from rodents, foxes and badgers and things like that. Ensuring the fencing is well-protected, so foxes and pine martens.

“Animal husbandry is a large part of the job, just like beef farmers have to be wary of TB, we have to be wary of HPAI, because if there's a case in a domestic or a commercial flock, you have to cull all your animals. Obviously I wouldn't want to be thinking about things like that, you know.”

In a statement on the issuing of the biosecurity measures for poultry Minister Heydon said the incidences detected highlight the “significant risk to Irish poultry and captive bird flocks, which is increasing substantially as winter approaches due to the seasonal migration of wild birds to Ireland”.