January 29, 2004

Japan Considers Allowing Thai Cooked Chicken

Japan is considering permitting imports of Thai cooked chicken meat if Thailand can provide scientific guarantees on their safety. There are, however, no plans to lift the ban on frozen chicken meat, which will remain in place for at least three months, a Japanese embassy official said Wednesday.

"We are considering lifting the ban on cooked products once we receive the necessary assurances from the Thai government," Hiroshi Oe, economics minister at Japan's embassy in Thailand, told Dow Jones Newswires after the end of an international conference on strategies to fight the bird flu epidemic in Asia.

Oe said, however, that lifting a ban on imports of frozen chicken meat will depend on Thailand's success in containing the outbreak which has so far spread to chicken farms in about one-third of the country's provinces.

The Thai government has been lobbying Japan to allow imports of cooked products, given that the World Health Organization has said that there are no signs that the H5N1 virus infecting chickens can be transmitted through consumption of well-cooked products.

Japan said Thursday that it would ban both frozen and cooked chicken products from Thailand for at least three months after the country conceded that bird flu had infected both fowl and humans.

The European Union has also banned Thai frozen chicken imports but still allows imports of cooked products.

Thailand is the world's fourth-largest poultry exporter, with Japan and the European Union accounting for at least 80% of the country's more than $1 billion in chicken meat exports.