Can France influence EU resumption of Thai frozen chicken exports?

Thailand has called upon French assistance in persuading the EU to unblock imports of Thai frozen chickens.

As it stands, EU imports of Thai frozen chicken have been banned for the past five years because of bird flu, forcing Thai exporters to ship out only cooked chicken products kept within an EU import quota.

Commerce Minister Porntiva Nakasai said she raised the request in a meeting with the French Minister of State for Foreign Trade, Anne-Marie Idrac, noting that Thailand's poultry farms had improved in compliance with the guidelines of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

The Livestock Department submitted a letter to the OIE on February 25 this year, stating that Thailand had been free from bird flu since the last culling in November 2008.

Thailand had an EU quota allocation of 252,643 tonnes of poultry, including 160,033 tonnes of processed chicken and 92,610 tonnes of salted poultry. But the ban meant that Thailand was unable to use its salted poultry quota, which was a loss of potential revenue.

Last year, Thailand exported 160,033 tonnes of cooked chicken worth US$759 million to the EU.

Under the quota, the tariff is 8% of the price per tonne. For chicken exported above the quota, the tariff is 53%. Last year, total poultry exports were worth US$1.56 billion.

Commerce Ministry statistics showed that Thai chicken exports last year were valued at THB62.11 billion (US$1.87 billion), up 7.44% on-year. However, shipments for the first 10 months of 2009 fell 18.28% on-year to THB43.25 billion (US$1.3 billion).