Fear of a fresh bird flu outbreak in the upcoming winter season has gripped the country's thousands of farmers, causing some 40 per cent drop in layer chicken farming for egg production, industry said on Tuesday.
Poultry farmers said they don't want to raise chickens that would lay eggs in the winter, as they fear that a fresh outbreak of avian influenza during the cold months would wipe out their entire flocks.
The deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus broke out in the country in February last year, forcing closures of thousands of commercial farms and causing widespread damages to the country's nearly Tk 100 billion poultry industry.
Experts fear a fresh bird flu outbreak in the upcoming winter --- a drop in temperature usually helps the virus spread and fester --- as the country has failed to get rid of the disease, despite increased surveillance and bio-safety measure.
"Our poultry industry is heading for another disaster as over 40 per cent farmers have stopped raising layer chickens for fear of a bird flu outbreak in winter," said Md. A Saleque, head of Agro and Salt Industry of BRAC, a major poultry breeder.
Saleque, also secretary general of the Bangladesh chapter of the World Poultry Science Association, said farmers who raise layer chicken don't want to take any risk.
"They have seen how destructive the flu could be. They fear that another outbreak of the disease in December and January would completely destroy their farms," he said.
Mahbubur Rahman, executive general manager of Aftab, another big poultry breeder, said farmers are now more interested to raise broiler chickens because they get their return within five-six weeks.
The government said the outbreak of the bird flu in the last seasons alone left millions of birds dead or slaughtered and forced closure of some 40 per cent of the country's nearly 125,000 commercial poultry farms.
The industry, which has become the country's main and the cheapest source of protein, put its total bird flu-related losses to over Tk 40 billion, making it the country's worst industrial disaster since independence.
Top day-old-chick breeders said the fear of a fresh outbreak is so high that they have to cut their production by a half because of very low demand for layer chicks
The weekly production of day-old layer chicks has declined to 2.0-2.5 lakh from 5.0-5.5 lakh a year ago, the poultry farmers association said.
"Sales of day-old-chick is now the lowest in recent years as our regular customers are reluctant to raise chickens," said Rafiqul Islam, senior official of Phoenix Poultry Farms.
He said average price of female day-old-chick has halved to Tk17-18 per piece this week against Tk 35-Tk 36 even in June.
The industry warned sharp rise of egg prices in the coming months.
"Nobody is interested to raise egg laying chickens. If the trend continues, the price of eggs will skyrocket within months," said Saleque.
On Tuesday, a dozen of eggs was selling at over Tk80 in the city market against Tk 70 a week ago.
President of Bangladesh Poultry Industries Association (BPIA) Kaiser Rahman said the government should take immediate measures to encourage the farmers and also step up bio-security to minimise the risk for another outbreak.
Director of the government's Department for Live Stock Md Salehuddin said they have already started meeting with poultry farmers at Upazila level to remove their fear.
"We told them that there is nothing to worry about as we found no case of bird flu in the past three months," he said, blaming vested quarters for spreading panic among the farmers.
