Where have all the rabbits gone?

Many Wild Meat Company customers have been frustrated by the lack of availability of rabbit meat. Formerly one of the Wild Meat Company's most popular products, wild rabbit is now regularly out of stock as fewer rabbits are found by hunters.

So, why are less rabbits being harvested?

The answer is due to a relatively new disease called Rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD), which is a highly infectious and lethal form of viral hepatitis that affects rabbits. Some viral strains also affect hares.  Mortality rates generally range from 70 to 100 percent.

RHD (Rabbit haemorrhagic disease) 

The disease is caused by strains of rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV), a lagovirus. Rabbit lagoviruses also include related caliciviruses such as European brown hare syndrome virus.

RHD was first reported in 1984 in China in farmed, domesticated rabbits. Since then, RHD has spread and is endemic in most parts of the world. In 2010, a new virus variant called rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus 2 (RHDV2) emerged in France. RHDV2 has since spread from France to the rest of Europe, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.

RHD was first reported in the United Kingdom in 1992 in pet rabbits. This initial epidemic was brought under control in pets by the late 1990s using a combination of vaccination, strict biosecurity, and good husbandry but there is no known control method in wild rabbits. The newer viral strain RHDV2 was first detected in Britain in 2014 and soon spread into the wild rabbit population.

Both viruses causing RHD are extremely contagious to rabbits, and occasionally hares, but does not affect other mammals or humans. Transmission occurs by direct contact with infected animals, carcasses, bodily fluids, and hair. Flies, fleas, and mosquitoes can carry the virus between rabbits. Predators and scavengers can also spread the virus by shedding it in their faeces.

RHD outbreaks tend to be seasonal in wild rabbit populations, where adults have survived infection and are immune. As young kits grow up and stop nursing, they no longer receive the antibodies provided in their mother's milk and become susceptible to infection. Thus, RHD epizootics occur more often during the rabbits' breeding season. However the more recently emerged RHDV2 causes death and disease in rabbits as young as 15 days old.  Rabbits may be observed grazing normally immediately before death.

Not all rabbits exposed to RHDV or RHDV2 become overtly ill. A small proportion of infected rabbits clears the virus without developing signs of disease. Asymptomatic carriers also occur, and can continue to shed virus for months, thereby infecting other animals.

Unlike myxomatosis, another rabbit viral disease that wiped out a huge proportion of the wild rabbit population in the 1960s and 1970s, RHD shows very few symptoms and most diseased or dead wild rabbits are never seen, dying suddenly in their burrows. With myxomatosis, rabbits built up immunity to quite rapidly and by the late 1990s the wild rabbit population had nearly recovered to pre-myxomatosis levels in many areas but it does not seem that immunity is building up as well with RHD. It may be that because RHD is so infectious and lethal, very few survivors are left to build immunised populations where there has been an outbreak.

Future Wild Rabbit Stock Levels

Wild rabbits are still relatively common in small numbers in Suffolk (the Wild Meat Company's catchment area) but where numbers are seen to build up on certain farms or areas, they disappear very rapidly due to outbreaks of RHD. Shot or trapped rabbits are only supplied to the Wild Meat Company when populations have risen locally to pest proportions on farms or in gardens, and this rarely happens currently due to these outbreaks.

It is hoped that immunity to RHD will build up in the wild rabbit population as it did with myxomatosis at the turn of this century, but until it does rabbit stock levels at the Wild Meat Company will remain low.

The denuded rabbit population not only affects the food choices of Wild Meat Company's customers but also has had wider influences on biodiversity. Predators of rabbits in the wild have been negatively impacted, with the population of stoats and weasels – specialist rabbit predators - falling in line with wild rabbit population.

Your options when wild rabbit is unavailable

In the meantime whilst stocks are low, the next best option we can recommend is squirrel.  As with rabbit, it's a light coloured meat with a subtle flavour and if you like rabbit, this is a great alternative to try. 

If you would like to be notified of when our stocks of wild rabbit are replenished, please enter your email address on the product page (Diced Rabbit and/or Whole Rabbit) to be sure not to miss out.

Image credit: Photo of rabbit on grass by Dean Ward on Unsplash