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

Eight live bird markets (six retail and two wholesale) in four provinces of northern Vietnam were included in our study, which was conducted between 2 October 2017 and 3 December 2017. Markets were selected if they had previously been confirmed positive for AIV in chickens within the past 12 months according to FAO-supported surveillance conducted by the National Centre for Veterinary Diagnostics (NCVD) and the Department of Animal Health (DAH, Hanoi) . Markets were also selected if they were open seven days per week, facilitated the trade of live chickens, ducks and pigeons, and had more than 10 poultry traders operating in them. There were no quail (live or dead) at any of the LBMs, although this was not by design. Each LBM was sampled daily for seven consecutive days. On each day the LBM was sampled, the first 10 traders to arrive who contained at least five chickens in their flocks were recruited for the study and oropharyngeal swabs were collected from 5 chickens in each of their respective flocks, which were then pooled together.