Bird flu outbreak hits poultry prices; sales plummet in North

The scare triggered by the outbreak of avian flu claimed in 6 States has started off impacting the beleaguered poultry sector.

Prices of poultry goods these types of as rooster meat and eggs have taken a beating above the past couple of days as consumers have started off shunning them.

Prices drop

In North India, the steep drop in offtake has impacted the rates, said Ramesh Chander Khatri, President of Poultry Federation of India (PFI).

“The farm-gate rates of rooster have started off slipping substantially in the last few days. Though the price was concerning ₹90 and ₹100 a kg last week, it is now staying bought for ₹50-55 a kg. Even the usage is down by just about 70 for every cent,” Khatri said adding that this was generally thanks to unwanted scare staying made by the media that poultry usage could lead to contracting the an infection.

Day by day offtake suffers

According to Khatri, the every day usage of rooster in North India, on an ordinary, is all-around 2.five crore kg. PFI has above 2,000 users, including a lot of significant poultry farms in the country.

Khatri said the scare has also triggered a dent in egg usage in north India. Equally usage and rates have long gone down by 15 to twenty for every cent considering that the circumstances had been claimed, he said.

Md Imran Sharef, who owns Al-Maaz Meals at Asia’s greatest poultry current market at Ghazipur in Delhi, much too, agreed that rooster rates have come down substantially. “Chicken rates have been fluctuating greatly in the last few days. The rates are a little bit up currently and we are advertising it for ₹60-sixty five a kg,” Sharef said.

Layer birds, ducks & crows

Bird flu is confirmed in 6 States – Haryana, Himachal, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, in accordance to Office of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (DAHD). There was some strange mortality of sixteen birds in a DDA (Delhi Enhancement Authority) park in south-west Delhi, but the samples are despatched to the National Institute of Significant Protection Animal Conditions in Bhopal. In most States, barring Haryana and Kerala, bird flu was confirmed both in crows or in migratory birds. In Haryana’s Barwala (Panchkula district), layer birds had been identified to be influenced, even though in Kerala’s Idukki and Kottayam districts the an infection was identified in ducks.

Khatri, who has his business at Sonepat in Haryana, said, “it was layer birds not broiler birds that are influenced in Panchakula. In addition to, the an infection simply cannot unfold significantly and large from an infected poultry farms. Birds anywhere beyond three-five km away from the farm are completely risk-free.” He also said that just about fifty,000 birds in these farms have previously been culled.

The DAHD assertion said the an infection was identified in some migratory birds in Junagarh district in Gujarat and the Bhopal laboratory has confirmed it was avain flu.

Southern circumstance

Meanwhile, in South also, poultry sector has come under tension in Telangana and Kerala. “Prices of broiler rooster have fallen by five-10 for every cent in some spots of Hyderabad. The egg rates (at the farmgate) fell to ₹4 a piece from ₹4.sixty early this week,” a poultry farm owner said. The retail price of rooster is ruling five-10 for every cent lessen than last week’s price of ₹200/kg.

While the usage has not been impacted considerably, Telangana poultry has experienced in the kind of slackened demand from other States. “We are 1 of the major three poultry gamers in the country. While the bird flu has not impacted the birds listed here, it did hurt the purchaser sentiment,” an official of Telangana Poultry Federation said.

Slack demand

Binny Emmatty, president of Poultry Farmers and Traders Samithy in Kerala, said that the purchaser conduct in direction of rooster meat and eggs has minimized the retail demand and there was a twenty for every cent drop in gross sales in the last two days.

Kerala consumes 1 crore kg of rooster for every week valued at ₹100 crore. Of this, fifty for every cent of the creation is fulfilled from the Condition by itself.

TP Sethumadhavan, Deputy Director, Animal Husbandry Office, Kerala, said that they have initiated ideal outreach programmes to develop awareness between consumers on poultry goods.

(With inputs from KV Kurmanath in Hyderabad and V Sajeev Kumar in Kochi)