May 30, 2013
China's egg sales decline due to bird flu outbreak
Declining egg sales in China may have been impacted by the bird flu outbreak that has so far claimed the lives of 21 people and infected more than 100 people, with the Chinese poultry sector reporting losses of US$1.6 billion following the slaugher of thousands of birds and the closure of live poultry markets in Shanghai and Beijing in an attempt to contain the infection.
Reports from one farm in East China where, it says, there has been a dramatic fall in sales of both chicken and eggs. Its stack of unsold eggs is piling up at the rate of 100 kilogrammes a day, according to the report.
This appears to fulfil a forecast given to world egg industry leaders gathered in Madrid recently that it was only a matter of time before eggs were implicated in the Chinese bird flu outbreak. Vincent Covello, founder and director of the Centre for Risk Communication in New York, raised his concerns during a speech to delegates at the International Egg Commission (IEC) conference in Madrid. He was outlining how a crisis like the avian influenza (AI) outbreak in China could have a devastating impact in business as well as human terms if media coverage and information management were handled badly. He said that pictures in the news of people in protective suits putting dead chickens in bags could ultimately result in consumers changing their buying habits.
Thiermann said that such viruses were unstable and the one identified in China was particularly unstable. The H7N9 strain did not cause severe illness in chickens or other birds, which, he said, made surveillance much more difficult. He said it was difficult to look for dead or ill birds to do testing, but China was carrying out "very aggressive" surveillance, looking at poultry, wild birds and pigs for evidence of the virus.
He said that surveillance and bio-security were essential to prevent the virus spreading. He added that China had its own diagnostic laboratories to work on the outbreak and it was sharing information with the OIE so that the entire scientific community could come up with a way to deal with the virus.
Tjeerd Kimman of the Central Veterinary Institute in the Netherlands said that the key to dealing effectively with any outbreak of AI was early detection and being well prepared - prepared even for the unexpected. He said that between 18% and 24% of AI infection was spread through the air, between 7% and 10% was spread through professional contacts, but as much as 70% was still unexplained. He said it was vital to have effective veterinary services to deal with AI outbreaks.
One sobering statistic for the free rage sector quoted by Kimman was that free range flocks were 11 times more susceptible to AI infection than cage birds. He said that, given society's wish for free range egg production, it was necessary to develop ways of managing this at the same time as preventing the introduction and spread of AI.
Whilst the strain of the virus involved in the outbreak in China is proving to be of little danger to birds, the Chinese authorities still killed more than 20,000 chickens from a live poultry trading zone in Shanghai in an effort to deal with the threatened spread of the virus. A number of other cities across the country have announced trading suspensions. It is reports of such measures being carried out that Covello believes will inevitably lead to questions being raised about the implications for egg consumption. In order to allay such concerns, the egg industry should be prepared to deal with the doubts that would be raised about eggs, he said. Information - and misinformation - could spread very rapidly through modern media.
