| Page 2 of 2 < |
In Pile of Waste, Md. Scientists Dig Up a Response to Bird Flu
They called it "in-house composting" and believed that if they could kill and dispose of the birds where they lived, they could stop the virus from spreading. After their first year of research at a vacant poultry house in Laurel, the team was forced to test its efficiency in a real-life situation: In 2004, avian flu was detected on three farms on the Eastern Shore.
First, the scientists had to kill all the birds, or "depopulate," as it is called in the poultry industry. Wary of animal rights groups, the researchers are reluctant to discuss details, but the process involves plastic sheets, large tanks of carbon dioxide and the transformation of live birds into dead ones.
  Temperatures in a chicken-composting bin at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore are kept at about 140 degrees. (By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post) |
"I'm going to get letters from PETA about this, but, yes, essentially we create a gas chamber," Tablante said.
Afterward, emergency workers used a bulldozer-like machine to scoop up the dead chickens and the chicken litter beneath them. Mixing both, they formed a long, narrow heap along the middle of each chicken house and capped it with a layer of litter and sawdust.
The litter provides carbon and microbes. The carcass contains moisture and serves as "food." And the ensuing microbial action can produce temperatures as high as 145 degrees, hot enough to kill avian flu. The end result, vast hills of organically rich dirt, can safely be used to fertilize farm fields.
The outbreak on the Eastern Shore was contained to the three farms and resulted in the destruction of about 525,000 birds -- a fraction of the mortalities in other areas.
"It did the job," said Malone, who has since begun a second experiment involving the use of firefighting foam to kill the birds faster and more humanely, with the added benefit of moisturizing the compost heap.
Since their work on the Eastern Shore outbreak, Malone and Tablante have been traveling across the country on a federal grant, spreading the gospel of composting after large-scale bird deaths. Lately, requests for talks have increased as the more deadly strain continues to spread abroad.
Locally, the two experts have visited composting classes that the Maryland Cooperative Extension uses to teach farmers how to recycle carcasses from routine chicken deaths.
For their most recent class in Princess Anne, Md., the room was packed. Farmers had come from as far as Pennsylvania for the day-long seminar, which included composting recipes, diagrams, lunch (deli sandwiches, no chicken) and some helpful, albeit gruesome, pictures.
Most of the farmers, however, seemed unfazed by the gore, even when instructor Gary Felton stuck a pitchfork into a compost heap and pulled out a half-decomposed bird.
"I've smelled worse," said Joseph Paul, 63, a third-generation farmer from Reliance, Md. "I can be picking up a dead chicken one minute and eat breakfast the next. It don't bother me."
For most farmers, Paul said, the truly frightening part was Tablante and Malone's slideshow of avian flu-infected farms, swarming with scientists in white suits.
Just the idea of killing millions of dollars' worth of poultry and throwing it into a compost heap made him cringe, he said. "That's what I consider a real nightmare."
