Avian influenza is a truly horrible disease, not just for the health and welfare of the infected birds but for the farmers dealing with an outbreak.

It is only they who can ever completely understand the emotional and financial consequences of seeing the animals they have reared gone to waste.

During a recent conversation with one poultry farmer, I suggested that the situation would be well understood by cattle farmers defending their herds from bovine TB.

He was quick, and quite right, to correct me on that supposition. It’s the equivalent of foot and mouth, he said – if one of the birds is infected he loses the whole flock. And he can’t get insurance to minimise his losses.

It has been a cycle of bird flu outbreaks, year after year, and there is no improvement. The situation is in fact getting worse.

Every week brings news of another case in Wales with an upsurge in the past month – it is here is Pembrokeshire too.

There are now strict biosecurity measures in place across the whole of Great Britain and there is unlikely to be a shift from that situation as the winter sets in.

Farmers can’t beat it, it is something the industry is having to live with, but unless something changes free range poultry and egg production just won’t be possible.

Even with the new biosecurity measures scientists are concerned that bird flu cases on farms will keep rising in the coming months as migratory birds return to Wales.

While bird flu can be contained on poultry farms or other controlled environments it is nigh on impossible to do so in wild birds.

Farmers are practising high levels of biosecurity to keep their flocks disease-free but meanwhile there are reports of dead wild birds in rivers, on beaches and on farmland, with no organisation, government or otherwise, taking responsibility for collecting these.

That can’t be good for transmission of the disease to other birds. And so the cycle will continue.

A more joined-up approach must be taken to manage the virus or the situation will get worse before it improves.