The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) leads Canada’s response to avian influenza, with involvement from provincial agriculture ministries including BC’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food, provincial centres for disease control, and the poultry industry.

The BC Poultry EOC coordinates the industry’s response to Avian Influenza in the province. We strive to minimize spread to domestic poultry flocks, mitigating the impact of the virus while maintaining BC’s food security and protecting the integrity of the BC poultry industry.

Together, we are taking necessary steps to protect BC’s food security and ensure a steady supply of eggs, chicken, turkey, and specialty poultry on grocery store shelves.

What BC Poultry EOC does:

Manage

Manage activities year-round, ensuring a constant state of readiness

Activate

Activate during outbreaks, coming together to manage day-to-day response activities. This allows us to act rapidly to ensure coordinated action, good information flow to and from BC’s poultry farmers, and immediate adjustment to any changing conditions.

Coordinate

Coordinate response activities within the industry and government agencies, in particular the CFIA, BC Ministry of Agriculture, and BC Centre for Disease Control.

Inform

Ensure farmers are kept informed about outbreaks, the biosecurity measures they must take on their farms, symptoms to watch for, and how to handle any potential outbreak. We do this through regular emails and townhall meetings, as well as direct communication.

Mitigate

Work with government to develop and implement measures and farm management practices to mitigate the spread of Avian influenza.

Research

Participate in ongoing research into the virus and how it spreads so our measures are well-informed and effective.

Monitor

Monitor for potential outbreaks. For example, we conduct surveillance for dead wild birds (mostly waterfowl like ducks, geese, and swans that are known to spread avian influenza) in coordination with government agencies, reporting anything we see. This helps us understand where wild birds are spreading the virus and for emergency measures to be deployed early.