British Poultry Industry Deals With Bird Flu

LONDON, Feb. 5, 2007— -- The bird flu outbreak on a poultry farm in rural Suffolk, England, has sent shivers of fear down many a spine. But these fears have little to do with the threat of a possible pandemic. What is really starting to worry people is the effect this outbreak will have on business.

Britain's poultry industry is worth $6.6 billion a year, with exports alone amounting to more than $750 million. Hours after the H5N1 strain of avian influenza was discovered, both Russia and Japan banned imports of live poultry, poultry meat, eggs and poultry feed from Britain.

English poultry exports to Japan exceeded 160,000 fowl last year. Today Britain completed its cull of 160,000 turkeys in a move to quell public fears over the spread of the virus.

So what lies in store for British poultry farmers this year?

This afternoon, in a speech in the House of Commons, David Miliband, the British secretary of state for the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, described the risk to the general public from this outbreak as "negligible" and repeated the Food Standards Agency's claims that there is "no risk" in eating poultry or eggs.

Despite his insistence that all possible precautions have been taken to contain the virus, convincing consumers of the safety of British poultry, both at home and abroad, will not be easy.

Poultry processing companies know this better than anyone else. Last April Northern Foods, one of Britain's leading food producers, suffered a drop of almost 50 percent in its share price, following the initial detection of the pathogenic H5N1 strain in Britain.

This year the discovery of the virus on a farm run by Bernard Matthews, Europe's biggest turkey manufacturer, raises new anxieties over the safety of poultry products.

Calls to the Bernard Matthews press office asking about the impact of the virus on its business were not returned. A press statement posted on the company's Web site attempted to assuage customers' fears by stating that all their products "are perfectly safe to eat" and "there is no need to recall or withdraw" products from supermarket shelves.

The effectiveness of such claims, though, will be measured by whether customers leave their products sitting right where they are now, on grocery shelves, or in their refrigerators at home.