2004-3-8
This is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Agriculture
Report.
A United Nations report says outbreaks of animal disease could
reduce world meat exports by one-third this year. The Food and
Agriculture Organization says losses could reach
ten-thousand-million dollars if import bans stay in place all year.
And this does not include costs like the measures to control the
current outbreaks in Asia, the United States and Canada.
In late February, the United States reported an outbreak of bird
flu on a farm near San Antonio, Texas. The highly infectious virus
was different from the one found earlier in the Northeast. But
officials said there was no danger to the public in either case.
Texas officials immediately destroyed almost seven-thousand
birds. Jim Rogers of the Animal and Plant Inspection Service at the
United States Department of Agriculture says the outbreak is under
control. He says no new cases have been reported. He says birds
experience a flu season just like people do.
But the outbreak in Texas led the European Union to suspend all
imports of live chickens, turkeys and eggs from the United States.
The ban will remain at least until March twenty-third. One-third of
world poultry exports come from the United States.
The world market in beef has also suffered, because of mad cow
disease. Last year one case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy was
found in Canada and one in the United States. The United States and
Canada hold a twenty-five percent share of the world beef market.
Last week Mexico agreed to reopen its border to some United
States beef products. But many countries continue to ban imports of
beef or chicken, or both. Some have banned chicken imports only from
affected states.
Import bans can affect countries differently. Japan, for example,
imports much of its chicken and beef. The result was an increase of
forty-percent last month in the price of meat from pigs. Japan has
also had its own problems with bird flu and mad cow disease. A third
outbreak of flu virus H5N1 was reported late last month, this time
at a farm in Kyoto. That is the virus that has killed more than
twenty people in Vietnam and Thailand.
Concern about bird flu has affected even countries in Asia where
the virus has not been reported. The U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization says lower demand for chicken and eggs in India, for
example, has cut prices there by one-third.
This VOA Special English Agriculture Report was written by Mario
Ritter. This is Steve Ember.