Punjab still in the grip of bird flu fear

The bird flu fear has badly hit the poultry industry in the north. Retail sales of chicken products and eggs at the eating outlets have not been affected there's been substantial fall in the prices of poultry products.

Talking to Business Standard, Barwala-based poultry entrepreneur Romil Mahajan said his farm had the capacity to produce 120,000 eggs every day. He was selling at Rs 1.30 per egg but after the spread of the bird flu panic, the price has been slashed to 70 paise an egg. The break even price is Re 1 per egg. "I am losing Rs 50,000 a day", said Mahajan.

Talking to the media in a meeting organised by hoteliers, S K Khanna, a senior government official at the Poultry Diseases Laboratory, Haryana, said Haryana and Punjab were losing Rs 2.5 crore and Rs 2 crore, respectively, due to the due to the ignorance of people and over exaggeration of the situation by the media.

The broiler that was sold at Rs 35 per kilo gram was now being sold in north at Rs 15 per kilo gram. This was because according to the WTO regulations , the countries hit by bird flu are restricted to export poultry and this has effected the domestic prices of poultry products.

He apprised that there was no reason to panic because the poultry farming in India was done in a different manner from the South East Asian countries.

"In some of the countries poultry is integrated with the duck breeding and piggery. The ducks are the silent carriers of the avian flu virus and transmit it to pigs and pigs tranmit it to humans", told Khanna.

He added that in India the poultry was done independently with complete survillence and monitoring so there were bleak chances of the transmission to human beings.

He informed that the governemnt of Punjab had banned the import of poultry products from Gujarat and Maharashtra and Haryana would soon follow the suit.