January 16, 2014

Panjit Pissawong, deputy director general of the Foreign Trade Department at the Commerce Ministry, has denied the rumour spreading on social networks that a bird flu epidemic was occurring at poultry farms in Thailand.

Panjit said her department had double-checked with the Livestock Department and the Poultry for Export Producers Association and it was confirmed that the rumour was groundless and that there was no epidemic of the H5N1 bird flu strain as was being claimed.

Since 2008, the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry had been successful in preventing a bird flu epidemic in Thailand. The ministry had in place safety measures acceptable to the international community, she said.

Several countries such as Russia, South Africa, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Singapore, the EU and Japan, which had banned imports of Thai frozen chicken since 2004, the year that avian flu hit Thailand, had since reopened their doors for Thai poultry produce.

In 2012, a total of 560,653 tonnes of chicken meat and chicken products, with the value of THB69.72 billion (US$2.1 billion), were shipped to foreign countries, Panjit said.

In January-November of 2013, 502,802 tonnes of the poultry meat and products worth THB64.49 billion (US$2 billion) were exported. It is expected that total Thai chicken exports for 2013 would be around 650,000 tonnes, with a total value of about THB80 billion (US$2.4 billion), she said.