Bird flu fears halve UAE chicken sales
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060526/48645365.html
Several poultry farms forced to close in UAE after chicken consumption declines by 50% because of bird flu worries.
SWEIHAN, United Arab Emirates - Bird flu fears have seen chicken consumption plunge nearly 50 percent in the United Arab Emirates forcing several poultry farms to close, an industry official said Thursday.
"Consumption has gone down between 45 and 50 percent," Sheikh Hamed al-Hamed, who heads the UAE's poultry association, told reporters at one of his farms outside Abu Dhabi.
"This decline in consumption has forced us to cut production by 30 percent and many small farms have gone out of business. We have also been freezing surplus meat and selling it at cheap prices."
Sheikh Hamed estimated the sector's losses at about 20 million dirhams (5.5 million dollars) adding that curiously the consumption of eggs had not been affected.
Last year authorities closed all live poultry shops operating inside cities and announced strict penalties for violators.
Majid al-Mansuri, the head of the national committee set up last year to combat the threat of bird flu, said that the country remained free of the disease and that strict measures had been put in place to protect poultry farms.
So far in the Gulf region only Kuwait, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia have announced cases of bird flu on their territory.