February 11, 2004

 

 

Asia Promotes Shunned Poultry At Home; U.S. Woes Deepen

 

While Asian governments try to ensure a wary public that chicken can be safe to eat despite a spate of deadly bird flu infections in people, the United States is suffering growing problems from its own milder outbreak of the disease.

 

The human death toll from bird flu in Asia stood Wednesday at 19, but health experts have traced those cases mostly to contact with sick birds. They say eating poultry after proper cooking poses no danger even if a chicken was infected, because heat kills the virus.

 

Some of the 10 Asian countries and territories whose poultry has been struck by the disease are launching energetic campaigns to promote their remaining chicken domestically, now that key overseas markets have banned poultry imports from flu-affected countries.

 

In Thailand, the government offered 60 tons of free chicken at a public weekend feast and served chicken curry Tuesday to about 100 Buddhist monks who performed a soul-blessing ceremony for the 26 million poultry slaughtered so far in Thailand to contain the outbreak.

 

China's newspapers have been full of images this week of top officials, including Agriculture Minister Du Qinglin, gnawing at drumsticks. "Agriculture chief eats chicken to reassure the people," the New Capital Times said Tuesday.

 

The governments are playing to a cautious audience.

 

"I don't know what to make of all of this," said Xiao Gai, a Beijing housekeeper who has reduced her poultry intake of late. "But chicken is definitely suffering from an image problem. I don't see many people buying it at the store. They pick it up, and then they put it back down."

 

China's poultry industry has much to lose: It produced more than 9.9 million tons of chicken meat and 27.5 million tons of eggs last year - 20% and 40% of total worldwide production.

 

"It's natural for top officials to lead the way. We need positive publicity, or the entire poultry industry could collapse," said Gong Guifen, head of the China Livestock Association's poultry department. "They're eating chicken because it's safe, and they want to show the public it's safe."

 

Chinese officials suspect or have confirmed bird flu in 14 of the nation's 31 far-flung regions.

On Wednesday, state media reported that Beijing, the capital, has banned live poultry from all other Chinese provinces and regions as a precaution. Beijing has reported no cases of avian flu in poultry. Also, more than 1 million homing pigeons have been confined to their pens in Beijing to protect them, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

 

Second Farm Hit In U.S. State

 

In the U.S. state of Delaware, agriculture officials confirmed overnight that a second poultry farm had been hit by bird flu. However, the variety there is not the H5N1 strain found in most of the affected Asian countries and which has jumped to people in Vietnam, killing 14, and in Thailand, killing five. The strain in Delaware is not believed to pose a threat to people.

 

Still, foreign countries have slapped bans on imports of U.S. poultry in the past week. Finding infections at a second farm - at least 5 miles (8 kilometers) away from the first outbreak confirmed last week - was likely to hurt efforts to lift those bans.

 

"This development is completely unexpected given the precautions we took, the investigation we made and the industry's expectations of this disease's behavior," Agriculture Secretary Michael T. Scuse said in the release.

 

"We will be taking immediate actions to contain this disease, but this is now a serious situation," he said.

 

Overnight, Brazil joined the growing list of countries that have halted U.S. poultry imports; China announced a ban Tuesday, joining Poland, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea. A ban by Russia, America's largest poultry export market, affects only imports from Delaware.

 

Also struck by bird flu outbreaks in Asia are Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan. However, Pakistan and Taiwan - like the United States - have a strain that is milder than H5N1 and is not believed to threaten humans.

 

The outbreak has led to import bans not only on poultry, but on pet birds, on fears they could be carriers of the disease. Kuwait overnight banned imports of live birds from Southeast Asia, two weeks after halting imports of poultry meat and eggs.