January 26, 2004

 

 

Japan To Seek China and Brazilian's Poultry

 

Japanese trading houses are looking to China and Brazil as alternative poultry sources following a ban on Thai chicken due to the bird flu outbreak.

 

Mitsubishi, the largest Japanese trading house, is talking to Brazilian suppliers about obtaining more chicken, said Ken Yamaguchi, a meat trader at the company. Marubeni, the fifth-largest, may buy more from Brazil or China, said Hisayuki Okamoto, a salesman in the company's meat and seafood department.

 

Chicken futures in Japan plunged by as much as 13 percent last week on concern that consumers might shun the meat until they are assured that it has not come from Thailand, the world's fourth-largest chicken exporter. Daiei, Japan's No.3 retailer, said it would not sell Thai chicken.

 

"Everything depends on how long the import ban lasts," said Yamaguchi of Mitsubishi. "If it lasts long, everyone will rush to Brazil to buy chicken and prices will rise."

 

Japan on Thursday banned imports from Thailand after a Thai senator said a child had caught the H5N1 virus, which has been blamed for the deaths of at least six people in Vietnam. On Friday, the Thai health minister, Sudarat Keyuraphan, said two of six people tested were shown to be carrying the bird flu virus.

 

Thailand became the biggest overseas supplier of chicken meat to Japan last year, when bird flu was detected in imported Chinese duck, slashing poultry purchases from China. Thailand meets a tenth of Japan's chicken demand.

 

Marubeni buys between 500 and 700 metric tons of chicken from Thailand per month. Almost two-thirds of chicken meat consumed in Japan comes from domestic supplies, which Mitsubishi is also considering as an alternative.

 

"We can also import more pork from the U.S., Canada and maybe Denmark" to cover a meat shortage in Japan, Yamaguchi said. The shortage follows the ban imposed last month on imports of U.S. beef following the discovery of the first case of mad cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, in the United States.

 

The United States, despite being one of the top three chicken exporters, may have little to spare for new customers in Japan, Yamaguchi said.

 

In Brazil, Perdigao raises hogs and chickens to produce pork and poultry products. It is the country's second-biggest food processor. In China, People's Food Holdings, Shanghai Dajiang (Group) Stock and Inner Mongolia Prairie Xingfa, process chicken and other meat products such as pork and lamb meat.

 

The Japanese broiler chicken for delivery in February, the nearest-term chicken contract on the Fukuoka Futures Exchange, fell ¥58, or 55 U.S. cents, to ¥375 per kilogram. The February contract has declined 26 percent since the end of 2003.

 

Chicken futures started falling last week after the Japanese government said on Jan. 12 that bird flu had killed about 6,000 chickens at a farm in Yamaguchi prefecture, the nation's first outbreak of the disease in 79 years. The announcement came after South Korea killed almost 2 million chickens and ducks to check the spread of the bird-flu virus in that country.