In wake of bird flu panic, chicken sales back to normal

Following a 12 April announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO) that Jordan was free of the potentially deadly H5N1 bird flu, poultry shop owners have been struggling to meet demand as chicken prices return to pre-flu levels. “Chicken sales are even better than before the crisis,” said deputy head of the Jordanian Farmers Union (JFU) Abdel-Shakor Jamjoum. Due to consumers’ fear of a bird-flu pandemic, the price of a kilo of chicken fell last month from the equivalent of US $1.96 to US $1.19 in most parts of the country. The prices for chicken eggs, meanwhile, dropped from the equivalent of US $1.75 per dozen to US $1.12. While the local market is back up and running, however, the export market is still down, as Iraq – Jordan’s primary market for poultry exports – has kept a ban in place on poultry imports from neighbouring countries. According to JFU figures, around 20 percent of Jordan’s egg production was exported to Iraq before the crisis. “We depend on the goodwill of neighbouring countries to reopen their borders to Jordanian poultry products,” said Faisal Awawdeh, assistant secretary-general at the Ministry of Agriculture for Livestock Affairs. Despite the WHO declaration, however, even local egg sales have yet to recover. “Egg sales aren’t recovering as well as chicken sales,” said Jamjoum, who is also deputy manager of the Agriculture Engineers Association and a farmer. “I guess people are still afraid of buying eggs because consumption has not yet reached pre-crisis levels.” Consumers confirmed this. “I haven’t bought eggs or chicken for more than a month,” said Hannah, a migrant worker who does her shopping in the Abdali neighbourhood of the capital. “I’m still afraid.” In spite of the fact that three weeks have elapsed since the discovery of any new cases, preventive measures against potential outbreaks of the flu continue to be implemented by the authorities. By the beginning of next week, a total of 50,000 domestic birds are scheduled to be culled. “Since no new cases have appeared recently, we’re not in such a hurry,” said Awawdeh. In March, four turkeys in the Ajloun governorate north of the capital were found dead of the virus. Since then, some 20,000 birds have been culled in affected areas, while public awareness campaigns about the disease have been stepped up. Government compensation for farmers and families whose birds have been culled was announced earlier this month, although precise reimbursement packages have not yet been fixed, according to officials at the Ministry of Agriculture. Health experts say that the HN51 strain of the virus is transmitted through contact with infected birds and not from cooked poultry. There are no reports of human-to-human transmission of the disease. A meeting of regional health ministers is scheduled to be held in Amman on 3 May to discuss further measures to combat the virus.