Russia's bird flu helps chicken importers
RUSSIA - Russia’s bird flu outbreak has cost producers RUR38m and helped foreign firms with exclusive import contracts to increase profits, yet the domestic industry is now confident of a recovery.Russia's agricultural ministry said bird flu, which was first seen in Russia this July, has cost the domestic industry around RUR38m ($1.3m) without counting extra expenses to prevent new epidemics, such as setting up quarantine zones.
Poultry farms in affected areas are still working in special closed regimes. The personnel of the farms are not allowed to keep chicken in their own houses, all the farms are closed for visitors and all the transport coming on to farm territory is thoroughly checked. Discussions are currently underway about developing a more efficient vaccine against the H5N1 bird flu virus.
The problems for the domestic industry have benefited importers so far by enabling them to increase prices as a result of a shortage in supply.
In July, Russian chicken meat was at the same price as imported ones, something which has never happened before.
Bird flu dropped the demand for Russian chicken and hurricane Katrina in America increased the prices for American chicken. Importers used this situation and raised the prices. Only a few companies have contracts to import chicken to Russia and they got huge profits.
Source: cee-foodindustry.com/
24 October 2005
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