Chicken sales up despite scare
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Although there has not yet been a complete return to normalcy, the sale of chicken and eggs at Tangerang markets had started to increase after a drop of sales, following the recent deaths of three residents infected with avian influenza.
Secretary of the Information Center on Chicken and Fowl Marketing in Tangerang, Sutrisno, said the increasing demand for chicken and eggs was mostly coming from restaurants and supermarkets.
"The good signs have been seen over the last three days," he was quoted as saying by Tempointeraktif.com on Wednesday.
A chicken trader in Anyar traditional market, Sri, said she had been selling at least 100 chickens a day this week. "Shortly after the bird flu deaths were made public, my sales had dropped to about 40 per day," she stated.
To attract buyers, chicken and egg traders have had to slash prices. Although the sales were improving, the price was still below normal.
"But it doesn't worry the traders," said Mawardi Nasution, an official from the Animal Husbandry Agency, "their main concern is that the business continues."
The deaths of Iwan Siswara Rafei and his two daughters from bird flu last month prompted the central government to declare Tangerang an avian influenza "red zone", which effectively discouraged people from buying or eating poultry products.
In the attempt to curb the disease transmitted through chickens and other fowl, the central government conducted a limited cull on thousands of chickens and 40 ducks from farms in the area.
As a preventive measure, government health officers also destroyed 31 pigs, which were also said to be infected with a form of the virus.
National Institute of Sciences (LIPI) researcher Ahkam Subroto said on Tuesday the killing of infected swine was necessary, although there was no scientific evidence linking bird flu deaths in humans to infected swine in Indonesia.
"But cases of infected pigs had been documented in China and Hong Kong," he told The Jakarta Post.
Ahkam explained that the bird flu virus can be transmitted to hogs from feral birds.
LIPI molecular virology researcher, Andi Utama, argued that pigs could host the human flu virus -- which could combine with the avian influenza virus -- swap genes, and create a virulent new strains.
Ahkam added that since the majority of poultry farms in the Greater Jakarta area were located near farms with other livestock like pigs, there was a danger that more could be infected.
"If the virus has already spread to pigs, there is the possibility of the deadly virus taking another step closer to becoming a human-to-human strain," Ahkam said.
A representative of the World Health Organization, Georg Petersen, said earlier that the organization had never issued a recommendation for the Indonesian government to enforce a mass cull of swine. He said that there were international guidelines that governed the selective cull of infected animals.
According to Associated Press, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization last month said more research would be needed to better understand the role of swine in spreading bird flu.
Its chief veterinary officer Joseph Domenech advised against a mass cull of swine, because they remained a crucial part of the livelihoods of local farmers. (004)