NEW DELHI - Chicken curry is off the menu
of Indians for the time being after the first
confirmed case of avian flu was reported in the
country last week.
Although the government
has said it is safe to eat cooked eggs and chicken
- officials were eating the stuff at press
conferences to reinforce the message - a more than
90% drop in sales has
been
reported in many areas across the country. Prices
of chicken have plummeted as fish and mutton
continue to shoot up.
Hollywood star Will
Smith, in India this week, said the two things he
loved about India were the beautiful actress
Aishwarya Rai and chicken tikka masala. Indians
too are known to love their butter chicken and
tandoor dishes. But fears are so high that chicken
consumption has plunged in restaurants, private
and state-run airlines and government-run
railways. Even the cafeteria of the Indian
parliament has knocked chicken off its menu. The
armed forces, one of the biggest consumers, have
suspended procurement.
Neighboring
countries in the subcontinent such as Sri Lanka,
Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh have banned import
of poultry or poultry feed from India. Persian
Gulf countries Qatar, the United Arab Emirates,
Bahrain and Oman have done the same.
Though it is not known whether Smith did
taste some of his favorite chicken, US President
George W Bush, who will visit India in the first
week of March, does not seem to be taking any
chances. According to reports, Bush's entourage
will cart their own KFC and McDonald's chicken in
special containers.
"It is absolutely
strange that the government, which claims to have
the situation under control, has now stopped
serving chicken even in parliament," a prominent
leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) has been quoted as saying.
More than
a million chickens have already been culled, with
the worst-hit regions in the western state of
Maharashtra and some areas of Gujarat. The
government has allocated US$25 million to contain
the spread and dispatched 11,000 doses of Tamiflu
and 3,000 sets of personal protective equipment to
the two states. To prevent panic sales of Tamiflu
- the only known drug to be somewhat effective
against bird flu - its over-the-counter sale has
been banned. The drug is also known to have
side-effects if consumed indiscriminately.
The government has also decided not to
allow private companies to import poultry vaccines
for bird flu. It will do all the procurement
itself in order to prevent overuse and the
development of an even stronger strain.
To
allay fears, luncheon press conferences are being
held across the country wherein government
officials have been eating chicken in front of TV
cameras. In Kolkata though, the municipal
corporation called such a meeting with chicken on
the menu, but the mayor of the city, who took
pains to assure citizens, skipped the lunch.
A senior Indian Health Ministry official
has said there is a "distinct possibility" some
humans are infected with avian influenza and "it
cannot be wished away". But the message
authorities are trying to convey is that, though
bird flu has destroyed poultry flocks in Asia and
Africa, it has infected fewer than 200 people
worldwide, almost all of whom worked with or came
in contact with sick birds. While 92 have died, no
one is believed to have contracted the disease
from eating cooked poultry.
Since the
first human deaths from bird flu were reported in
Vietnam in 2003, the disease has spread westward.
It has hit Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and
India is the latest addition.
The birds
have been afflicted by the most virulent strain of
avian influenza, H5N1, which spreads very fast.
Quite a bit is known about this strain that first
appeared in China in 1997, and has been spreading
around the world since 2003. It is transmitted by
wild migratory birds, some of which may have
traveled to India. While the carriers do not seem
to suffer, among domesticated birds it is very
contagious and fatal.
The World Health
Organization (WHO) issued a warning that bird flu
could spread to other countries, including India,
after an outbreak of the virus was detected in
South Korea in December 2003.
The poultry
sector is bracing itself for big losses, though
some observers say the threat may only be in
passing, if the panic surrounding the flu is
contained as it has been in Thailand. The Thai
government has mobilized an army of volunteers to
fight the flu, a system that has been applauded by
international health agencies. More than 750,000
volunteers, one for every 15 rural households,
help spot early indications of bird flu, both in
poultry and humans.
The monitoring system
set up in Thailand in November 2004 has resulted
in a decline in bird-flu cases. While 12 people
died from bird flu in Thailand in 2004, only two
died last year. In contrast, Vietnam suffered 20
deaths in 2004, and 19 last year. The systems are
not considered very effective in countries such as
China, Cambodia and Laos that have high numbers of
avian-flu deaths.
The government agencies
in India have been praised for quick reaction to
the flu, but the challenges can be overwhelming.
Indian poultry is known to suffer from such
diseases as Ranikhet, which kills birds in their
thousands, but the losses are limited to the
supply side of livestock rather than plummeting
demand for chicken as with bird flu. The fears in
the minds of people are difficult to remove.
In January-February 2004, Indian poultry
suffered losses estimated at more than $600
million due to unfounded flu psychosis. This time
the disease has actually struck, so the impact
will be more. Japan, which imported more than
1,600 tons of processed eggs last year, has banned
poultry imports from India. Several other export
contracts have been canceled.
The turnover
of India's poultry sector is more than $6 billion.
It employs more than 5 million people. India is
the world's fourth-largest producer of eggs and
fifth in chicken broilers. It produced 43 billion
eggs and 1.7 billion broilers in 2005, according
to industry estimates.
The Indian Express
comments, "Panic, as the Surat 'plague' of the
mid-1990s and the SARS [severe acute respiratory
syndrome] outbreak in East Asia more recently
show, leads to economic losses on account of
slowdown in trade and travel. Instead, an
atmosphere of calm and reason, of the sort seen in
Thailand's response to bird flu, deals with the
disease, with minimum distress to the poultry
trade.''
Siddharth Srivastava is
a New Delhi-based journalist.
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