March 15, 2006

Trinidad bans poultry imports from south-eastern France

Trinidad has banned poultry imports from a region in south-eastern France that is struggling to contain a bird flu outbreak, officials said Tuesday (March 14).

Trinidad has placed a temporary ban on the importation of live birds, hatching eggs and unprocessed poultry products from Ain in south-eastern France, where the deadly H5N1 bird flu was discovered.

"France does not provide a large amount of our poultry," Ministry of Agriculture spokesman Brent Bain said. "This is a precautionary measure. It will not affect the industry in a significant way."

There have been no cases of bird flu reported in the Caribbean.

But the H5N1 strain of the disease has devastated poultry stocks in Asia and has led to the forced slaughter of hundreds of thousands of birds there and elsewhere.

Sales of poultry plummeted by about one-third in France, the 25-nation European Union's lead producer and the only member where H5N1 has stricken a commercial farm. Trinidad and Tobago have joined some 45 non-EU nations that have suspended French poultry imports.

In Trinidad, chicken sales have dropped by more than 50 percent since January following an outbreak of a fungal poultry infection which led to fears of bird flu across the two island nation of 1.3 million people, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

In France, nearly one million fowl confined indoors and banned from the market after the bird flu outbreak were being culled starting Tuesday, said Gerard Mucke, head of the FDSEA farm union for the Ain region.