February 6, 2009

Thailand's Saha Farms Group is hoping that its new farm structure and poultry-raising programmes under the compartmentalisation system will help to reopen the market access to Japan.

Saha's key market, Japan, stopped importing chicken meat from the company after bird flu was detected in Thailand's poultry farms in 2004.

The company now hopes that its OIE-approved system will assure importers of the hygiene of its raw meat.

Panya Chotitawan, chairman of Saha Farms Group, said the compartmentalisation system was applied with OIE guidelines, which are considered effective safeguards to prevent bird flu and contain an outbreak.

Prior to the bird flu outbreak, Saha Farms exported about 100,000 tonnes of raw chicken, but the number fell to zero after the outbreak.

Importers then started to favour heavily on cooked chicken products, which are deemed to be safer.

Panya said the company took one or two years to recover from the bird flu outbreak, but it has now fully recovered and is ready to regain its lost market.

Sirilak Suwanrangsi, the minister-counsellor of Thailand's Agricultural Affairs Office in Japan, had taken the Japanese media to visit Saha Farms Group.

Sirilak said the recession had changed the eating habits of Japanese, who now prefer to buy raw meat and ingredients for home-cooked food.

This shift in consumer behaviour is expected to benefit Thai chicken exports, and the lifting of the import ban on raw meat would contribute a significant export income to Thailand since Japan is the largest Thai poultry market.

Japan imported 45.57 percent of Thailand's total chicken exports of 384,000 tonnes last year, according to the Thai Broiler Processing Exporters Association.