Chicken sales up despite scare

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)