India culls 3.4m birds but fails to contain avian flu outbreak
Sunday, 10 February 2008
Jo Johnson
INDIA is struggling to contain its worst avian influenza-epidemic, in spite of culling 3.4m birds and setting up a 5km poultry exclusion zone round the state of West-Bengal, the epicentre of the outbreak.
The government's failure to reassure farmers that they will receive fair compensation for birds culled by rapid response teams has left experts scrambling to stop the disease entering the crowded markets of Calcutta and Delhi and led to a crisis of confidence in India's poultry industry.
The latest outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, confirmed on January 15, is proving more difficult to contain than earlier manifestations at large poultry farms in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat in 2006 and, last year, in Manipur.
Roughly 80 per cent of rural households in West Bengal keep hens and ducks in their backyards to supplement their incomes, a practice encouraged by the state government, which distributes millions of chicks to poor communities each year.
The ministry of agriculture in New Delhi claimed last Tuesday that "unusual mortality" of poultry birds in West Bengal was coming down significantly, although 1.3m birds had died of the disease there. The preventive culling of birds to create a poultry-free cordon round the state was under way in Assam but had not yet begun in neighbouring Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa.
The spread of the disease to 13 of West Bengal's 19 districts, and strong suspicions that it has already jumped the exclusion cordon, have prompted a collapse of chicken prices across the country and a ban on Indian poultry exports by at least eight countries.
In a market in New Delhi, stallholders were last Monday selling what they described as "safe" chicken for Rs40-Rs50 a kilogram, down from about Rs80 ($2, euro1.40, £1) a kg in December.
The epidemic is a blow to India's fast-growing $4bn (€2.7bn, £2bn) poultry industry, which employs 3m -people and has been at the centre of a shift in dietary habits. On a per capita basis, the industry produces four times as many eggs per year - 41 - as in 1970 and more than 10 times as much chicken meat.
On November 8 the government informed the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health, or OIE, that India was free of the disease, following an outbreak in the north-eastern state of Manipur in July. The first outbreak of avian influenza in India was detected in February 2006 in the contiguous states of Maharashtra and Gujarat.
India's share of world poultry exports remains small but has grown more than 30-fold over the past 15 years to Rs3.3bn, with exports going to countries ranging from Bangladesh to the US and Japan, according to the government's 2006-07 Economic Survey of India.
Egg export volumes from Namakkal in Tamil Nadu, which accounts for 90 per cent of national exports, have fallen by nearly 50 per cent to about 3.5m a day since the outbreak was confirmed, according to a Citigroup research report.
The government has said it is taking all possible steps to stop the spread of bird flu to humans, who typically catch the disease through contact with infected poultry, and has given Tamiflu to hundreds of bird-culling teams and hospital workers in West Bengal.
Early this month marked the 100th death in Indonesia since the virus was first reported in humans there in 2005. Pakistan and Burma reported their first human infections in December, bringing to 14 the number of countries where the virus has jumped species in this way.
Debate continues to rage over whether the risk to humans has been overstated. The World Health Organisation published a study last month which claimed that 25 per cent of human cases of H5N1 had "a source of exposure that was unclear".
Bernard Vallat, director general of the OIE, said recently that "the risk was overestimated" and fear of an imminent human -pandemic was "just nonscientific supposition", the Associated Press reported.
........................................
FT Syndication Service
INDIA is struggling to contain its worst avian influenza-epidemic, in spite of culling 3.4m birds and setting up a 5km poultry exclusion zone round the state of West-Bengal, the epicentre of the outbreak.
The government's failure to reassure farmers that they will receive fair compensation for birds culled by rapid response teams has left experts scrambling to stop the disease entering the crowded markets of Calcutta and Delhi and led to a crisis of confidence in India's poultry industry.
The latest outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, confirmed on January 15, is proving more difficult to contain than earlier manifestations at large poultry farms in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat in 2006 and, last year, in Manipur.
Roughly 80 per cent of rural households in West Bengal keep hens and ducks in their backyards to supplement their incomes, a practice encouraged by the state government, which distributes millions of chicks to poor communities each year.
The ministry of agriculture in New Delhi claimed last Tuesday that "unusual mortality" of poultry birds in West Bengal was coming down significantly, although 1.3m birds had died of the disease there. The preventive culling of birds to create a poultry-free cordon round the state was under way in Assam but had not yet begun in neighbouring Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa.
The spread of the disease to 13 of West Bengal's 19 districts, and strong suspicions that it has already jumped the exclusion cordon, have prompted a collapse of chicken prices across the country and a ban on Indian poultry exports by at least eight countries.
In a market in New Delhi, stallholders were last Monday selling what they described as "safe" chicken for Rs40-Rs50 a kilogram, down from about Rs80 ($2, euro1.40, £1) a kg in December.
The epidemic is a blow to India's fast-growing $4bn (€2.7bn, £2bn) poultry industry, which employs 3m -people and has been at the centre of a shift in dietary habits. On a per capita basis, the industry produces four times as many eggs per year - 41 - as in 1970 and more than 10 times as much chicken meat.
On November 8 the government informed the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health, or OIE, that India was free of the disease, following an outbreak in the north-eastern state of Manipur in July. The first outbreak of avian influenza in India was detected in February 2006 in the contiguous states of Maharashtra and Gujarat.
India's share of world poultry exports remains small but has grown more than 30-fold over the past 15 years to Rs3.3bn, with exports going to countries ranging from Bangladesh to the US and Japan, according to the government's 2006-07 Economic Survey of India.
Egg export volumes from Namakkal in Tamil Nadu, which accounts for 90 per cent of national exports, have fallen by nearly 50 per cent to about 3.5m a day since the outbreak was confirmed, according to a Citigroup research report.
The government has said it is taking all possible steps to stop the spread of bird flu to humans, who typically catch the disease through contact with infected poultry, and has given Tamiflu to hundreds of bird-culling teams and hospital workers in West Bengal.
Early this month marked the 100th death in Indonesia since the virus was first reported in humans there in 2005. Pakistan and Burma reported their first human infections in December, bringing to 14 the number of countries where the virus has jumped species in this way.
Debate continues to rage over whether the risk to humans has been overstated. The World Health Organisation published a study last month which claimed that 25 per cent of human cases of H5N1 had "a source of exposure that was unclear".
Bernard Vallat, director general of the OIE, said recently that "the risk was overestimated" and fear of an imminent human -pandemic was "just nonscientific supposition", the Associated Press reported.
........................................
FT Syndication Service