Asian Governments Ban US Poultry Exports

February 9, 2004
By Guy Dinmore in Washington and Deborah Brewster in New York

Several Asian governments imposed a ban on imports of US poultry at the weekend after an outbreak of bird flu in the state of Delaware.

Unlike the bird flu wreaking havoc in Asia, the Delaware strain - known as H7 - cannot be passed on to humans, but state agriculture officials ordered the slaughter of 12,000 chickens at a farm on Friday.

South Korea responded first by banning US poultry imports and was followed by Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. Hong Kong and the Philippines have only banned imports of chickens from Delaware. Department of Agriculture officials could not be reached for comment on Sunday. The department has been struggling for two months to limit the fallout of December's discovery of the first US case of mad cow disease, which prompted US beef bans across Asia.

Separately, Vietnam on Monday said it confirmed two more cases of bird flu in people, including a 27-year-old man who died, bringing the country's death toll to 15 and Asia's overall to 19.

The US is the world's second largest exporter of chickens and the fourth biggest supplier to Japan, providing about 500,000 tonnes a year, and the US poultry industry had been expecting a year of higher prices and lower feed costs. The biggest US poultry exporters are ConAgra, Tyson Foods and IBP. On Friday, before news of the poultry ban, the USDA said it expected income from livestock sales to be down by $4.9bn to $10bn in 2004 because of mad cow disease.

Countries likely to benefit from the ban on US poultry include Brazil, the world's largest exporter, and New Zealand.

Japan's Nihon Keizai newspaper quoted Yoshiyuki Kamei, agriculture minister, as saying he imposed the provisional ban to prevent the spread of avian flu. Reports said Japan had barred imports from Rhode Island and Connecticut after a bird flu outbreak last year.

The UN warned last week that bird flu, which has killed at least 18 people in Asia, is moving uncontrolled through the region and could spread elsewhere without aggressive steps to halt it.

Technical experts from the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Health Organisation and the World Animal Health Organisation said that without appropriate disease control, the risk of the epidemic spreading to other countries - including distant regions - was likely to remain high. Jacques Diouf, FAO director-general, said: "If this influenza is not controlled, it will spread to other countries and have consequences - economic and health - for the entire human community."

FAO experts have been calling on Asian governments to slaughter immediately any bird infected with, or exposed to, the virus.

However, they said that strategic vaccination programmes could also reduce the chances of infection of poultry not yet exposed, and could limit the need for mass slaughter.

The FAO has also been urging the introduction of stricter controls on the movement of poultry, greater surveillance of bird stocks and swift reporting of infections by governments. China said on Sunday it had newly confirmed cases of bird flu in poultry in six provinces, in an upgrade of cases previously listed as suspected outbreaks, AP reports from Beijing.

A report on state television said the bird flu cases were confirmed in the provinces of Hubei, Shaanxi, Gansu, Hunan, Guangdong and Zhejiang.

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