Poultry collecting facilities (PCFs) as a place where poultry from various areas are gathered together before slaughtered or sold to the market is considered to be a place with high risk of transmitting AI viruses. At this place, contact not only occurs among the birds gathered, but also between poultry and human. The AI endemic status of most regions in Indonesia has caused the risk of AI transmission in PCFs, which is from poultry coming from many regions, even greater.

DKI Jakarta province has hundreds of PCFs because this area is a marketing destination for hundreds of thousands of chickens imported from various regions. The collecting and rearing system for poultry applied in each PCFs quite varies. With these conditions, DKI Jakarta is an interesting location to conduct a surveillance program to detect the presence of AI viruses in PCFs.

Wageningen International in collaboration with the Livestock, Fishery, and Marine Service Office of DKI Jakarta province and Center for Indonesian Veterinary Analytical Studies (CIVAS) had conducted a three-month AI surveillance program (April – June 2007) in PCFs in DKI Jakarta province. The aim of the program was to detect the presence of AI viruses in PCFs in DKI Jakarta province and identify risk factors for AI virus infection in the PCFs.

The surveillance program was conducted by placing 7 to 8 sentinel chickens in 40 PCFs in five municipalities in DKI Jakarta. Sentinels were continuously monitored to detect their AI infection status. Monitoring was done by testing blood serum, cloacal swab, and tracheal swab samples collected from the sentinels. Blood serum samples were tested with HI test and cloacal and tracheal swab samples were tested with rt-PCR.

A questionnaire was used to collect information on the general characteristics of PCFs and characteristics of the husbandry system applied at PCFs which in turn could be a risk factor for AI transmission in the PCF.

The questionnaire found that most PCFs in DKI Jakarta had no more than 10 workers and had business experience more than 5 years. For the husbandry system applied, most PCFs used postal type poultryhouses which are usually less than 500 m2 wide. Most PCFs sell broiler chickens and receive chickens from fixed suppliers. At the PCF, chickens were always provided with feed and water and are usually at the facility no longer than 1 day before sold. The poultry health system implemented at PCFs is inspection of animal health certificates (SKKH) from every arriving batch of chicken and health inspection of arriving chickens by the workers. In terms of biosecurity implementation, most PCFs use special trucks for poultry transportation, crates used are plastic crates, chicken arrival is in the morning, poultry houses are cleaned by sweeping and giving disinfectants, sick chickens are separated, and manure and dead chickens are thrown away.

Result of swab samples analysis found (H5) AI viruses in 84.2% of PCFs involved in the program. The result describes that poultry health and biosecurity management implemented at the PCFs were not effective in preventing AI virus introduction and spread in the facility. Poultry health and biosecurity management applied in PCFs were not effective because it was not done properly and maximally.

During the program, the average survivability of sentinels in AI infected PCFs in Jakarta was 20 days with high mortality up to 45 days after sentinels were placed at PCFs. Husbandry-related risk factors significantly influencing the survivability of sentinels in PCFs were regular cleaning of poultry houses, application of medications, poultry house size, management of dead birds, and poultry delivery time.

Several recommendations were given based on results of the program. The recommendations were further study is needed to determine the source of AI viruses found in PCFs particularly those found in chickens coming to PCFs and improvement should be done on the husbandry management, poultry health management, biosecurity and hygiene practices in PCFs.