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The outbreak of bird flu at a farm near here has set off alarm bells among consumers, with sales down 20-30 per cent in the last two days.
Retail outlets said the offtake in the last two days had been 20-30 per cent lower, mainly due to the bird flu.
“Some of our large buyers had lifted less quantities as a precautionary step during the last two days. Retail consumption too has been impacted. There will be a big impact for us if broiler sales on Sunday go down remarkably,” a leading broiler chicken player told Business Standard.
Telangana Poultry Breeders Association president G Ranjit Reddy said there has been a 20-25 per cent fall in consumption due to bird flu, adding “it is not a remarkable drop”.
Most households consume chicken on Sundays and hotels and restaurants buy more during the first half of the week. “On average, most of the demand is seen in two or three days in a week,” according to the association.
Reddy said impact on sales in the last two days could be around Rs 70 crore, mostly led by the ban imposed by the Andhra Pradesh government and drop in chicken consumption. The poultry industry in Telangana records an annual Rs 10,000 crore turnover. Telangana consumes around 40 million kg broiler chicken each month, and bird flu could have impacted one million kg consumption so far.
Bucking the trend, prices of broiler chicken remained more or less the same from the previous day’s Rs 70-72 a kg. As per online price portal Poultry Bazaar, broiler rates here today quoted Rs 70-74.
However, Reddy said there wasn’t any large impact on the sale of eggs as lower prices had improved offtake from Maharashtra and north India.
The unit price of egg dropped from Rs 2.38 last week to Rs 2.28 as on today at the farm gate level in Hyderabad, led by general market trend and rise in supplies. Other key markets like Vijayawada and Warangal too saw softening of rates.
Culling complete
Culling of 150,000 chicken across identified farms in Thorrur village of Hayathnagar mandal in Rangareddy will come to an end today.
“All the 150,000 birds that tested H1N5 positive in the one-km zone would be culled by today evening,” said D Venkateswarlu, director of Animal Husbandry.
However, the department of health will continue monitoring human health near the bird flu-infected zone for the next two weeks.
