A FARMER has said his business is ‘effectively gone’ as his 5,000 hens are to be culled amid an outbreak of bird flu.

Speaking to BBC Radio Devon on Friday, February 21, Jerry Saunders of Orchard Organic Farm said his business was ‘gone effectively as of today’.

The entire population of 5,000 hens were culled by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) after two cases of bird flu were detected at the Stokeinteignhead farm.

This comes after the APHA confirmed cases of a ‘highly pathogenic avian influenza’ at a premises in Teignmouth.

Around 1.8 million birds have been culled in the past three month, the BBC revealed last week.

‘It is the most hideous thing’ Jerry said on John Acres’ morning show.

‘It has gone through them so quickly’ he added.

Of its ten poultry houses, two were confirmed to be infected with bird flu.

But if the lose of the hens was not bad enough, the family run, organic egg farm had no choice but to destroy an estimated £10,000 worth of eggs and £5,000 worth of chicken food.

‘It is our business, we are a small farm, we have built it up from nothing, we have mortgages, bills to pay and a family to support’ Jerry said.

Jerry said the the business was ‘effectively gone as of today’ [Friday, February 21].

‘I am still struggling to get my head around it’ Jerry said.

Jerry went to say that the family were ‘still reeling’ from the shock.

Thursday, February 20, saw APHA descend upon the farm, with around a dozen agents dressed in hazmat suits setting up culling equipment.

‘We have argued passionately to try and go for a limited cull and some form of monitoring, but its not happening’ Jerry went on to say in conversation on BBC Radio Devon.

‘They draw a line around the farm... everything inside that line does not move and will not move for probably 12 months’ he added.

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs has previously said that compensation would be paid farmers for their healthy birds that ave to be culled as a part of disease control.

Orchard Organic Farm says it has no idea what the future holds.

Unless the family fork out a large sum of money to have the farm deep cleaned, it has to be left in quarantine for at least 12 months, in which time its customers will have found alternate suppliers and, of course, the threat of bird flu remains.

‘Why on earth would we go back for more when the risk is still there and it could happen again’ Jerry said during his BBC Radio Devon interview.

It is not clear how the virus made its way onto Orchard Organic Farm.

Jerry suggested the possibility of migrating seabirds and, given that the farm is situated above the southern bank of the estuary of the River Teign, this may not be a million miles away from the truth.