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EU’s first farm case confirmed |
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PARIS, Sat. --- The European Union’s first outbreak of the lethalH5N1 strain of bird flu in commercial poultry was confirmed today in France, the EU’s largest poultry producer. But President Jacques Chirac, trying to keep the lucrative market alive, sought to ease fears by insisting that eating poultry is safe and panic unjustified. The Agriculture Ministry said lab tests confirmed H5N1 in turkeys at a farm of more than 11,000 birds in the Ain region. Hundreds of birds died and the remainder were slaughtered even before the presence of the lethal virus was official. The farm has been sealed off. However, Chirac said there was “no danger in eating poultry and eggs”. “In any case, the virus in question… is automatically destroyed by cooking. So there is strictly no danger”, the President said as he inaugurated the annual agriculture fair in Paris --- where poultry has been banned as aprecaution. |
Panic appears to have developed among consumers. There has been a drop of up to 30 per cent in poultry purchases even before the announcement. In an indication of the global impact of the French case, Japan temporarily suspended imports of French poultry, including the delicacy foie gras, meat and other internal organs, according to the Japanese Embassy in Paris. In 2005, Japan imported 1,510 tonnes of duck and other poultry meat and 377 tonnes of internal organs, including foie gras, from France. Panic has economic and social consequences for France, Chirac noted, and is “totally unjustified”. The spread of bird flu to commercial stocks in France, which has been working for months to prevent and prepare for an outbreak, served as a sobering sign for other developed countries that consider themselves well protected. France has some 200,000 farms that breed 900 million birds each year. |
In 2004, the latest year for which figures were available, the French poultry sector generated more than €3 billion (RM13.24 billion) in revenue --- more than 20 per cent of total EU production. Scientists fear the H5N1 strain, which has spread from Asia to at least 10 European countries and Africa, could mutate into a form that is easily transmitted between humans, sparking a pandemic. No human cases of bird flu have been reported in the EU. The disease has killed at least 92 people elsewhere, mostly in Southeast Asia. Before the outbreak in turkeys, the only confirmed French cases of H5N1 in birds were in two dead wild ducks found near the contaminated farm in Versailleux. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, speaking yesterday at a bird flu preparedness exercise in Lyon, said that France was “one of the best-prepared countries” for a possible flu pandemic. --- AP. |
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