Pecking at the EU's door

In Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, the inhabitants of the quiet coastal town of Bodega Bay are attacked by feathered creatures of all kinds - starting with the heroine being nipped by a seagull and ending in an en masse assault on the main character's house with windows boarded up for protection. Unlike many productions, the thriller has aged well and you still feel like kicking the first pigeon you come across after watching the film. However, during recent weeks, one hasn't needed to dust off the old Hitchcock collection in order to get ornithophobia, it's enough to switch on the news

With the first case of bird flu identified on the Greek Island of Oinouses, EU member states are becoming more and more concerned about a possible pandemic. Exports of poultry from affected countries have been banned, and most states have placed orders for anti-viral drugs. In Poland, the Ministry of Agriculture has ordered that domestic fowl be kept indoors and the 'nothing-to-declare' gates on Poland's eastern borders be closed in order to keep the virus from reaching the country's farms.

Short of drugs

However, no country is really prepared for the epidemic should the potentially lethal strain of H5N1 be passed on to humans. In Poland, the stocks of anti-flu vaccines have been exhausted and oseltamivir - the drug sold under the Tamiflu brand and believed to cure avian influenza - won't be delivered until some time next year. Prime-ministerial candidate Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz admitted there was some carelessness in the country's preparations but the Ministry of Health insists everything is under control.

"Six months ago, Minister Marek Balicki called a commission for crisis management in case avian flu appeared in Poland. The government earmarked zł.300 million for that purpose and has a further zł.20 million in reserve for the creation of a pandemic vaccine. The reason why pharmacies have run out of ordinary flu vaccines is that there was never much demand for them in previous years," explained Health Ministry spokesperson, Jan Bondar.

Poultry producers the ones to suffer

Leszek Kawski, general director of the National Poultry Council is even less worried. "So far avian influenza has led to 60 deaths in Asia. Do you know how many people die of ordinary human influenza every year? A couple of hundred. The panic is unnecessarily spread by the media, pharmaceutical concerns anticipate great profits and feel entitled to raise drug prices to ridiculous levels."

Poultry producers and distributors have fewer reasons to be excited. According to Barbara Ulatowska from the National Chamber of Poultry and Feed Producers, the price of chickens on the livestock market fell from zł.3 per kilogram in September to zł.2.30-2.40 per kilogram at the moment. "Poultry producers are very anxious about the economic repercussions related to the whole panic about bird flu. People should be informed that the risk of catching the disease from poultry coming from industrial production is very small as with or without the ministerial ordinances they are always kept indoors. Free range chickens are a different matter. No wonder the disease spread from Asia," Ulatowska says.

Stable demand on the poultry market

According to the Institute of Agriculture Economics and Food Economy, avian influenza is likely to cause lower demand for poultry, but so far this hasn't happened. In H1 2005 poultry production grew by 20 percent in comparison to the same period last year, amounting to 915,000 tonnes. Consumption is also expected to increase by six percent, and will soon reach 23.5 kg per person, which is one kilogram more than the EU average.

Regardless of actual figures, the psychological factor plays an important role and although there hasn't been much change in demand, share prices of Warsaw Stock Exchange-listed poultry producers such as Indykpol and Ekodrób recently fell.

Panic at the stock exchange

"The actual influence of bird flu on the industry is really small, but because of the media frenzy one can observe great panic on the stock exchange. Share prices of poultry producers slid by a couple to a dozen or more percent," said CA IB analyst Łukasz Wachełko. "When in 1997, there was a poultry epidemic in Holland and Belgium, Polish companies earned a lot from exports to these countries. But it is rather thanks to the media hype than the actual danger," Wachełko added.

Poultry breeders are afraid and have taken all preventive measures they can to protect their fowl. Now, they can only wait. "No insurance company will insure against bird flu and we all know how difficult it is to obtain damages from the state. Bigger firms usually insure their exports as in case of epidemics the borders are closed," says Kawski.

 

Calm but careful

Both the Agriculture Ministry and Chief Veterinary Officer Krzysztof Jażdżewski are treating the problem very seriously. They admit that a direct risk of contamination exists as the disease can be spread by wild birds. Within the next few weeks millions of Siberian migratory birds are due to arrive in Poland. The birds fly via Russia and Kazakhstan, where bird flu has been confirmed, and stop off in Poland on their way further west.

"Unfortunately, wild birds cannot be kept indoors. There's nothing we can do about it. Poultry breeders simply have to be careful and keep their fowl locked up. In case the of a highly pathogenic avian influenza, bird mortality rates are very high ranging from 80 to 100 percent. An ill chicken can die within 36 hours of the appearance of the first symptoms," explains Jażdżewski.

WHO warnings

The World Health Organization (WHO) level of pandemic alert remains unchanged at phase three: a virus new to humans is causing infections, but does not spread easily from one person to another. The Organization recommends that travelers to areas experiencing outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N1 in poultry should avoid contact with live animal markets and poultry farms. However, large amounts of the virus are excreted in the droppings of infected birds so the virus can easily be spread by migratory birds.

Although a direct danger of fowl contamination does exist in EU countries, experts say it has been blown out of proportion by the media. Humans are much more likely to catch an ordinary cold than H5N1. The last epidemic registered in Poland - was classical swine fever (CSF), also known as hog cholera - which took place in 1994. It did not affect humans, at least not their health. The biggest danger the bird flu virus migrating towards Europe poses is to domestic fowl and breeders' bank accounts. The fright factor, however, would make Hitchcock proud.