Chicken festivals fail to attract customers

     Hyderabad/Hoogly: As one more poultry farmers association makes feverish attempts to revive sales, hoping to clear the air about bird flu with yet another chicken festival, they know their regular customers are still staying away. In Andhra Pradesh capital Hyderabad, the venue of yet another chicken festival on Friday, mostly poor and homeless people chewed down the roasted chicken. Other poultry farms across other states have launched "buy one, get one free" campaigns or given away free eggs to regular customers. Chicken prices in most parts of India have halved to about 25 rupees (56 cents) per kg, cheaper than many vegetables. "Farmers in Andhra Pradesh are bearing a loss of ten to twelve crores daily . We have given a crop holiday for broiler chicken also. That effect will be felt after 43-45 days. This was undertaken within a week of the flu. Consequently, the population of birds will also go down here," said K.Narayana Reddy, President Andhra Pradesh Poultry Farmers Association.

      Bird flu delivered a massive blow to India's poultry trade when it first broke out in mid-February. Authorities launched a massive culling of poultry and a clean-up drive, after which they claimed the outbreak was contained. Sales began to pick up -- until the disease struck again. Two more outbreaks have been reported, the latest on Tuesday in the western state of Maharashtra, the site of two earlier outbreaks, and in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh. In West Bengal, things are no better. About two hundred poultry farmers in the Arambagh area of the state's Hooghly district are facing bankruptcy with prices of chicken falling drastically. Anup Dey, a small farmer who owns 5,000 chicken blames the media for spreading the scare in a state where there is no reported case of the flu. Dey fears for the future of his once flourishing business and says, like many others, he is on the brink of closure. "The market condition is so bad that we are worried about our future. A Rupees 40 chicken is being sold at Rupees 20. If this continues, we will have to shut down the business. We are facing huge losses. But still, people are queuing up to buy chicken at low prices. We can't continue like this. There is no other way but to stop the business. I have decided to shut down after waiting for some more time," he said. Arambagh is also home to Asia's largest hatchery. But Dey says that while big poultry owners would still be able to tide over the tough times, it is small farmers like him who will not be able to last long.

      While there were some signs of recovery after the first outbreaks, the latest one is proving disastrous. Government appeals, advertisement campaigns and even press conferences by chicken-munching politicians and officials have not helped draw many Indians back to chickens. Chicken is a staple for meat-eaters in India, where beef and pork are not eaten for religious reasons or quality concerns. India has culled almost half a million birds and plans to kill 250,000 more. About 1.5 million eggs have been destroyed, thousands of people checked for bird flu and hundreds of villages sanitized. No human infections have been reported. But nothing, not even free offers, seems to draw chicken-eaters. Exports have also been hit. The Poultry Federation of India says orders worth four billion rupees have been cancelled since the first outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu. India's central bank has announced some relief for the poultry industry, including allowing a one-time reduction of four percentage points on bank loans and a moratorium of one year on loan repayments.

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