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No more free-wheeling for NRW-chicken The Wild Geese. Minister Uhlenberg fears they could bring bird flu. Experts believe the fear is unfounded

If they suspect that soon the end is funny? Even the chickens clucking along on carefree Richtersgut in the Rhine region Kranenburg. Plucking here and there on the grass and lay an egg every now and then. One and a half acres for 1350 chickens for sale, which are absolutely ideal conditions.

In the language of farmers called the: excellent organic conditions. On each chicken come here more than ten square meters of land. But in four days, it is thus came to a halt. Then it says: From the stable! The NRW-Minister of Agriculture, almost the chief executive of the chicken wants it that way. Because soon the wild geese. And because perhaps the dreaded flu virus H5N1 may have from Asia.

allowed in 21 communities in the Lower Rhine and in a town in Westphalia, 15 September to 30 November birds are only kept in sheds. And for all other breeding birds NRW is a “feed ban in the open.” Who ordered last week, Eckhard Uhlenberg, the new CDU-Environment and Agriculture Ministers of the country.

How much NRW poultry from the strict curfew is concerned, no one can say exactly. Alone in the district of Kleve stall requirement applies to an estimated 300 commercial farms, and are home to some 260 000 head of livestock. In addition, the animals come from 500 so-called private small holders. Similar figures are circulating in the district of Wesel.

Kranenburg is one of the communities classified as particularly at risk. There, too, every year again let down wild geese and ducks from northern Europe and Siberia to winter. The meadows, which lie around the farming community Richtersgut were, in the cold months, “black with geese,” said Godehard Schnütgen, farmer on Richtersgut. And a disease in the goose dormitory would hardly stop at free-range chickens.

So Schnütgen will imprison them. It sounds simple. But for organic farmers a huge challenge. Organic chickens for sale are accustomed to exercise and natural light. Unlike their conventional counterparts cage their beaks are not clipped. And with this sharp Freßwerkzeug they hack also refers to other dogs if they sit too close to each other constantly.

Against that cannibalism help only a sophisticated entertainment, says Schnütgen. He will put straw bales in the barn, where it may be around plucking the chickens. Even a newspaper can deal with a chicken. It takes a good hour, until it was dismantled an edition of the local press in small confetti. Then you have something new ago – has worried as one of the 20 discarded leather footballs, just when the Schnütgen TuS 07 Kranenburg.

Added difficulties come with the feeding. An organic farmer may administer no dyes. Instead, he must get every day fresh grass. And carrots. “An organic food carrot,” says Schnütgen, “is more expensive than the supermarket carrot people.”

Godehard Schnütgen does not complain. He wants also that his animals stay healthy. He also has comparatively good. His stables are large, have the chicken is still twice as much space as in a normal chicken farm. But what do the owners of geese and ducks? “A goose is a water bird that you can not lock into a stable,” says one, his name will not read in the newspaper and the “pissed off” is about “this flu hysteria.”

Because the authorities know that you should slaughter a goose better than that one puts them in a barn, there are exception rules: In exceptions it rich when nets stretched across the animals would. “Networks” asks, holder of the geese with laughter, “such things do not work”. Votes like this are rare. The relevant county veterinarians consider this a high level of acceptance “- knowing full well that they can not control every poultry farmers, which, while nodding good, but running around his pen cattle still leaves free.

Godehard Schnütgen come to terms with the inevitable. He can not afford, of the Regulation, and notices. But sometimes he wonders already, why the strict risk provisions are calculated imposed on him. “They always say, would accompany the comprehensive measures for the poultry farmers in passing a few samples taken from the wild animals. It could indeed do the opposite.”

Bauer Schnütgen has no idea that in Wesel, less than 60 kilometers away from him, sits an expert who gives it right. He says: “I think the regulation is excessive caution.” His name is Johan H. Mooij, he has a doctorate in biology, managing director of the Biological Station in the district of Wesel, chairman of the North Rhine-Westphalia Ornithological Society. For over 30 years, he explored the paths of migratory birds.

Mooij has a world map in front of them, to their registered routes. “There are birds that fly from the northeastern part of Eurasia to Southeast Asia and there are those that fly from the northwestern part of the West -.. And between us there is a route that crosses the Himalayas to India and Pakistan.” This is the first premise, the Johan Mooij said. The second is: “These routes are sharply separated from each other, the danger of mixing is minimal..” Consequently, there is no migratory birds that could bring the H5N1 virus directly from Southeast Asia to Germany.

Johan Mooijs Unwahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung goes on. So far there is no single evidence that wild birds kidnap this virus. And the dead bar-headed geese, which were found in May at the Chinese western Qinghai Lake and now must constantly used as evidence? “These animals may not have brought the disease in southern China,” said Mooij, “because there is no bar-headed geese.

Rather, they came from India, and there is currently no bird flu. Mooijs Conclusion: The geese settled after their flight across the violence-Himalaya Mountains on the Qinghai Lake. “Weakened and exhausted as they were, they caught the deadly H5N1 is there a virus, but must have been introduced earlier in the poultry farms of this region,” said Mooij. And not by migratory birds, but by people.

Even the appearance of bird flu in the Urals has the sole responsibility for Mooijs assessment and to man alone. “There is no migration, leading from Mongolia to Kazakhstan.” Very wrong but there is a train that is often used by people and domestic fowl: the Trans-Siberian railroad.

The question remains whether the possibility exists that migratory birds bring the virus from the Kazakh chicken farms where the Lower Rhine? Johan Mooij shakes his head: “Very few come by there,” he says, “And who is there once was white, well that wild birds do not cuddle there with poultry.”

Therefore Mooij and his colleagues wrote a few weeks ago a letter to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, and offered to help – no response. Now try your luck at the NRW-Mooij Minister. The chickens in the stable of Godehard Schnütgen would be destined for an early response are very happy.