Asian chicken flu, export opportunity for Romania

Romania is in no danger of an avian flu epidemic, like that, which has recently broken out in several Asian countries, specialists say. The only influence on the domestic poultry raising industry is that the disease may affect Romanian producers’ exports of fowl to Europe and to other destinations to a certain extent. “There has never been avian flu in Romania, and there is no such risk at the moment. This is a very old disease and it does not jump from birds to humans, as far as I know,” Ilie Van, the chairman of the Poultry Farmers Association in Romania said. He says 274 tonnes of frozen fowl (i.e. less than 1% of the total) were imported from the Asian countries to Romania last year, yet this was done before the outbreak of the disease, which led to halting all imports from this region at the end of November 2003. Gheorghe Antochi, chairman of Agricola International, one of the largest poultry farms in Romania, says the Romanian producers make little difference to the European market. “1,500 tonnes of fowl exported to EU last year make it very hard to have a view. This Asian flu could be an opportunity for us if we were not faced with large obstacles in terms of production costs induced by the alarming increase in the price of fodder cereals,” Antochi says. ZF