Poultry trading behaviours in Vietnamese live bird markets as risk factors for avian influenza infection in chickens

Sealy, Joshua E.; Fournie, Guillaume; Trang, Pham Hong; Dang, Nguyen Hoang; Sadeyen, Jean-Remy; Thanh, To Long; van Doorn, H. Rogier; Bryant, Juliet E.; Iqbal, Munir

To put the identified risk factors into a broader context, we A previous study by Fournié et al. (2012) have shown that it is possible to identify specific and distinct trader profiles of LBM sellers in Vietnam. As such, traders are classified as retailers or wholesalers based on who they primarily sell poultry to; retailers primarily sell directly to consumers, whereas wholesalers primarily sell to other poultry vendors within the trading network. In our study, we show retailers experienced higher odds of infection due to their trading practices. The retailers in our study were those who sourced their birds from middlemen, sold a relatively small volume of chickens and primarily sold directly to consumers. The risk factors associated with influenza virus A infection in chickens, selling only to consumers and buying from middlemen, can therefore be linked to retailers, which highlights their potential role in disseminating virus through the poultry trade network. In contrast, the wholesalers in our study were those who sourced from large commercial farms, sold a large volume of chickens and primarily sold to other vendors.