November 8, 2012

Oman bans poultry imports from India due to bird flu

For the second time this year, Oman has banned import of poultry and poultry products from India.

The decision comes after reports of an avian influenza outbreak in Bangalore in the Indian state of Karnataka were confirmed by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) last week.

A senior official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MoAF) said that restrictions on poultry imports from India came into effect from this week because of the outbreak of bird flu in the country. It was only on September 18 that Fuad bin Jaafar al Sajwani, the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, issued a decision to lift the ban on the import of live birds and poultry products from India.

The ban was imposed in March after OIE had confirmed reports of the spread of the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus in a few districts of the eastern Indian states of Odisha, Tripura and Meghalaya. Companies importing eggs and chicken from India say business gets affected because of these off and on restrictions as they have to look elsewhere for sourcing their products.

Prashant Desai, commercial manager of Al Hamadi Trading & Contracting, said that his company imports about 150-200 tonnes of frozen chicken from India every month on an average. "We source chicken from various countries like Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. But now even Brazil has cut down on production. Finding new sourcing countries is the biggest difficulty."

Bharat Kumar, general manager, National Livestock, which was importing about 90,000 eggs per week from India, said that the company will now source eggs from European and US markets. Kumar said, "The bans affect business very much, but health issues are a greater priority and we have to abide by the rules."

Kumar, whose company procures thousands of hatching eggs as well, said that these off and on bans give a window of opportunity to Indian traders to hike prices. "Knowing that there could be a ban in the near future, traders want to make the most of the situation while imports are open. That is the reason the price of Indian hatching eggs is now more than the European rates."

Desai said that his company got a couple of containers from India before the ban came into place. "We were also lucky to get a consignment from Denmark at reasonable rates. Importing from Denmark is very costly and that is the reason why we do not generally import from there. But the stock will not last more than a week, so we will have to start looking to source from other markets."

According to the Tamil Nadu Poultry Farmers Association, Oman accounts for 33% of eggs exported from India.