AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

Donations can't be serious Do the donors get a discount if the fowl ever come out and breed if they want to buy chicks? I find that bizarre

Stone wall silence until now, suddenly they want a web site when it suits them to beg for money.

Agree. As much as I think the genetics will benefit poultry keeping in Australia and that the release of the birds would pose a minimal risk I am not at all inclined to donate.
When others expressed a natural curiosity about what breeds were coming in many of these people got on their high horse and said it is none of anyone else's business. Now suddenly it has become a charitable exercise.

Well said Weston, poultrygroups and doggo exactly right on all points. When we asked for information on the process, the source stock, the breeders names who supplied the eggs ect.. ALL we got was complete silence and not just on this forum but anywhere on the internet. We asked why there was no web site in the first place and also got complete silence, so why would we support them now with donations when they don't support us and by us I mean the many tens of thousands that use this forum that asked for or seeked information over the last year or so and got completely ignored.

I will not donate a cent

Would they need to register [ATO] as a charity to ask for donations? I think they have a cheek to ask anyone to donate money to a private enterprise where they will make money long term by selling fowls they breed if they are ever released. I only donate to a needy cause and this is not that. I also agree they kept all this secret until it suited them to now need our help sorry all to little all too late for me.

I agree with you all this is an issue for the syndicate and their costs not the publics. My tax money is already being spent by daff on court fees.

Wow they have balls to ask I will give them that much but no money from me thats a given too smart for that

I don't see why they would have to be a registered charity to ask for donations? They only need to do that if the 'donations' (perhaps better thought of as fighting fund contributions) are going to be tax deductible - which these aren't.

The streaker at the Rugby has reportedly set up a site asking for 'donations' / assistance to pay his fine! I'm sure that's not registered with the ATO.

NB- I'm not a syndicate member or even a breeder at this stage, but I'm interested in the imports and argy-bargy shenanigans.

Quite right Blak1 but the legality is not the real issue.
The question is whether the syndicate members have a moral claim for public financial support to assist them with their purchases, particularly in view of their high handed attitude to the general poultry community before their problem arose.

Hello all

So much heat and ruffled feathers. As you are all aware, I am new, and will make mistakes with my poultry and protocols on the forum. I apologise in advance if I overstep the mark, and my lowly place in the pecking order. If I mix any of my bees, they fight;, if I introduce new hens to the chook yard, all hell breaks loose and I have to work out some system of resolving pecking order differences without injury to any parties, least of all the confused rooster used to ruling a peaceful domain without fueding females.

I had heard of this importation long before I joined APF, there were a couple of breeds of interest to my project on breeding a sound legged meat chicken for free range use. Now I found out about that without all the fuss that has been happening in the 27 pages of comments that I have just scanned. I return to my image of the above on the chook yard, and ruffled feathers. I see what those people in the import committee were doing , at a very great risk to themselves, would ultimately have been of benefit to most on this forum. I happen to believe that people who are undertake such projects can given credit for having the knowledge to source stock of appropriate quality for their purposes. If they did not, the whole benefit would collapse, as is so obvious from all the comments that have been made over and over on this forum. People want to see the breeding stock, they want to see the British Quarantine Facility ( I suggest very few people ever get into such quarantine facilities, any visitors are too much of a risk). I ran a closed pig herd for 30 years, I know the risks, and maintained its original health status. There are people who expect to wait to buy birds at the prices that they are used to paying now, and I ask WHY? The sheer cost of all this, demands that the progeny must return a higher price. $50 a bird, i think not, double it would be fairer given the output and obvious risks, and these risks were obvious at the start, not just now. I believe the organising group should be congratulated for their initiative, and supported. I find it sad that there seems to be an element of 'knocking' from the group because no information was forthcoming as I can see it. Perhaps that should have been an element of their 'marketing', but they were also no doubt aware of the risks, and over-hyped expectations. The more publicity, the worse that would be. As it is, it is going to be bad enough.

I am not a shareholder by the way, could well have been in the second import which contained the breeds of interest to me.

However the key question here is the strain of Salmonella, AQIS needed to be more specific, to identify the strain. They are all identified by number. They had 5 weeks after the death of the chicken to do the pathology. By my reading after I first saw the report, Pullorum is regarded as being present in Australia in backyard flocks, but not commercial flocks. One cannot believe all that is found on line, but I was convinced. Others on this forum have commented about the atypical occurrence of an infections disease in this group, that has been met at very short notice with very hard-handed action. Seems AQIS work the other way when allowing imports in competition with Australian products, there they say 'acceptable risk' is allowed. Again I experienced that, such a decision largely destroyed the Australian pigmeat industry in the 90s.

There needed to be better explanation and information from AQIS to justify this for me to support their action. I suspect the wording they have used, I need specifics.

My 2 bobs worth
Bob the Beeman