Jalgaon bird flu outbreak dampens poultry industry

Seen as further damaging chances of recovery

Yet another outbreak of avian influenza, this time at Jalgaon in Maharashtra, has come as a dampener to the poultry industry, which was getting back on track after a major crisis.

“This outbreak could further damage our chances of recovery,” said Mr Bharat Tandon, Chairman, Compound Live Stock Feed Manufacturers Association of India. “We have to learn to live with it,” he said.

The losses to the entire industry after the first outbreak of avian influenza would be Rs 4,000-5,000 crore.

Following the first outbreak of avian influenza, retail sales of poultry products are yet to pick up even as institutional sales have commenced. “The defence services, railways and airlines have put back chicken on their menu but unless retail sales pick up, profit margins would remain severely under pressure for the industry,” said Mr Tandon.

“The industry is just about on the road to recovery though prices have not picked up,” said an official of Venkateshwara Group.

Retail sales of poultry products account for the bulk of sales, though institutional sales have helped an improvement in offtake to a certain extent.

“The poultry industry has been severely impacted by the outbreak of the avian influenza. Many of the small farmers would be hit badly as they have not been able to cover their cost of production,” said Mr Tandon. The bigger farms may be able to edge back as volumes help where margins are thin.

Prices, which had fallen as much as 40-50 per cent, have edged up but are still far from their normal prices. “With this Jalgaon episode, prices could fall,” Mr Tandon said. As Jalgaon is not a high-density area, chances of the disease spreading could be low.

Educating farmers

Meanwhile, the poultry industry is stepping up efforts to educate farmers on bio-security measures.

Faced with bleak prospects, following the outbreak of avian influenza, farmers, including those involved in backyard poultry, are being forced to take bio-security measures seriously, industry representatives said. The big poultry firms are asking their farmers to step up bio-security measures, Mr Tandon said.

Although the industry claims that bio-security measures have been implemented quite stringently, at the field level there are indications that the birds are kept in unhygienic conditions that could lead to spread of diseases.

However, there has been no transmission of the flu to humans so far, said Dr Vijay Satbir Singh, Secretary, Public Health Department, Maharashtra Government.

Hindu Business Line

India bird flu cases ‘positive’

The authorities in the western Indian state of Maharashtra say they have identified four cases of the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain. Tests on poultry from the state’s Jalgaon district have returned positive results, the local administrative head, Vijay Singhal, told the BBC.

Over 70,000 chickens in the region are to be slaughtered, officials say.

Hundreds of thousands of birds were destroyed in Maharashtra after India’s first bird flu outbreak last month.

The virus later spread to some poultry farms in the neighbouring Gujarat state.

here have still been no reported cases of the virus in humans in India – 95 samples collected from people with flu-like symptoms last month tested negative for bird flu.

The fresh cases have been detected in poultry in four villages of Jalgaon district, federal farm minister Sharad Pawar told parliament on Tuesday.

“We are dealing with the situation on a war footing,” Mr Singhal said.

Sixty teams have been deployed in the villages to begin the mass slaughter of chickens.

Farmers are to be paid 40 rupees (almost a dollar) in compensation for each bird.

Medical teams will also be sent to the villages and their surrounding areas on Thursday to carry out checks and treat anyone suspected to be infected with the bird flu virus.

Sales fall

The detection of bird flu in India last month led to sharp falls in the sale of poultry and poultry products.

India’s parliament, military, railways and major airlines temporarily stopped serving chicken and eggs, despite government reassurances that they were safe to eat if cooked properly.

The virus does not at present pose a large-scale threat to humans, as it cannot pass easily from one person to another.

However since 2004 about 100 people have died of the H5N1 strain – most of then in South-East Asia.

Experts fear the virus could mutate to gain this ability, and in its new form trigger a flu pandemic, potentially putting millions of human lives at risk.

BBC

India battles bird flu, virus kills Azeri dog

Health workers went door-to-door looking for people with bird flu symptoms in western India on Wednesday, while the virus killed a dog in the former Soviet state of Azerbaijan.Denmark became the latest European country to report a case of highly pathogenic bird flu in wild fowl, although it has yet to confirm it is the feared H5N1 strain that has killed around 100 people in Asia and the Middle East.

Neighbouring Sweden said on Wednesday that tests had identified H5N1 in two wild ducks found on its east coast, confirming its first outbreak.

In recent weeks, bird flu has pushed deep into Europe, taken hold in Africa and flared anew in Asia, adding urgency to efforts to contain its spread and prevent a pandemic.

While it remains mostly a disease of poultry, bird flu can occasionally infect humans who have direct contact with sick birds.

Scientists fear it is only a matter of time before the H5N1 virus mutates into a form that passes easily among people, triggering a pandemic which could kill millions and cripple the global economy.

Indian officials said they were checking if the latest outbreak — which occurred in backyard poultry in Jalgaon district of Maharashtra state — was the deadly H5N1 strain.

Three young women who died in recent weeks in Azerbaijan, on the crossroads between Europe and Asia, are thought to be the latest human victims of the virus.

Azerbaijan said on Wednesday that bird flu had been detected in a stray dog found in the capital Baku on March 9.

There have been recent reports of H5N1 infections in Germany in cats and a marten, a weasel-like creature.

The World Health Organisation says that only domestic poultry are know to have played a role in transmitting the virus to humans, but has also called for further investigation into the significance of infection in other mammals.

INDIA TAKES NO CHANCES

Afghanistan is virtually certain the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found in chickens, but is awaiting one final test for confirmation, a government official said on Wednesday.

The government said on Monday an H5 subtype bird flu virus was confirmed in three chickens in Kabul and two in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

“Five cases have registered positive for H5N1,” said Mustafa Zahir, director-general of the National Environmental Protection Agency, referring to test results from Italy.

“We’re 99 percent sure but there is one test left to confirm it,” he told Reuters.

The secretive Asian state of Myanmar has also just detected its first case of H5N1 and the virus appears to be spreading.

Thousands of chickens have been slaughtered on five more farms in central Myanmar after hundreds of birds died of bird flu-like symptoms, the U.N. food agency said on Wednesday.

The five farms are in the same area in Mandalay Division, 430 miles (700 km) north of Yangon, where the country’s first outbreak of the H5N1 virus was found on two farms on March 8.

After its first outbreak last month in birds, also in Maharashtra, India tested more than 100 people for bird flu but all proved negative.

“We are not taking any chances and are straightaway going for a household check to see if there are any people with flu-like symptoms,” Vijay Satbir Singh, Maharashtra’s most senior health official, told Reuters.

“If need be, we are ready to quarantine people with flu-like symptoms in local hospitals,” he said.

Health workers carrying kits used for collecting blood samples visited houses asking families with poultry if anyone had fever, cough or cold, Singh said.

The first outbreak resulted in the loss of millions of dollars to the large poultry industry in India where it is estimated that more than half the 1.1 billion population eat chicken.