Bird flu scare leads to a dip in chicken sales
The panic “created” in the media due to the outbreak of avian influenza has led to a sharp dip in the sales of chicken throughout the country, whereas the demand for goat meat has increased significantly.
Ramesh Bhagwati, president of the Poultry Federation of India, told The Sunday Guardian, “The false panic created by the media over the outbreak of bird flu has affected our business. There has been a sharp fall of about 30% in the sale of chicken. Farmers have also stopped breeding chicken as they went into serious losses because of the bird flu scare which led to people stopping eating chicken. This scare has now resulted in a shortage of chicken in the markets of North India because farmers do not have money to rear chickens anymore.” Asked about the prices of chicken, Ramesh said, “The prices are doing fine in North India because of the shortage of chicken; initially the prices had come crashing down. However, the situation in South India is very bad as the prices of chicken have gone down.”
With the fear among people over consuming chicken still looming large, demand for goat meat has considerably shot up.
Tahseen Qureshi, former president of the New Delhi Meat Traders’ Association, said, “Meat sales in Delhi have increased by over 15% because people have shifted to eating mutton instead of chicken as the bird flu scare is high. This has also led to a drop in sales of chicken in the city.”
The death of a few birds inside the Delhi zoo earlier last month led to the Delhi government shutting down the Delhi zoo and several other parks in the national capital where birds reportedly died. The government also issued an advisory of Dos and Don’ts for citizens of Delhi and this further led to scare among people about outbreak of avian influenza.
The Union Ministry of Agriculture’s committee headed by Joint Commissioner, Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairy and Fisheries (DADF), is also monitoring the situation closely and coordinating with state governments for any likely or unnatural death of any bird in any state.