Bangladesh still struggling to recover from 2007 bird flu outbreak

Bangladesh's poultry industry is still struggling to recover from a 2007 outbreak of bird flu that closed two-thirds of the country’s 150,000 related businesses and left half of the 5 million people who earned their income from it unemployed, according to reports.
Roughly 2.3 million chickens have been culled as a result of 550 avian influenza outbreaks since 2007. There were 171 outbreaks in 2011, and 21 so far in 2012. The most deadly year was 2008, with 226 outbreaks, according to the government’s Department of Livestock Services. Since 2008, farmers forced to kill their birds due to suspected H5N1 infections have been paid anywhere from US$0.49 for baby chicks to more than US$2 for older birds, but they say it's not enough. “Farmers often do not get the compensation, or get it [late] and face hassles to get it, resulting [in them] often selling the sick chicken in the markets, which is spreading the disease...and also threatening the public health,” said Syed Abu Siddique, president of Bangladesh Poultry Industries Association.
The government has said it is doing the best it can. “We are doing strong surveillance, with our full effort to protect the industry, and every farmer gets the compensation if chickens on their farm are detected [with] bird flu,” said S M Nazrul Islam, the director of Bangladesh's Avian Influenza Preparedness and Response Project and a senior official of Department of Livestock Services.
Prices are going up, say industry experts, and the country may need to rely on imports soon. Smaller domestic supplies have contributed to a price increase from US$0.27 for four eggs in August 2011 to US0.42 the same time in 2012, while the price of chicken has gone up 13 percent to US$2 per kilogram in the same period, according to the government. The experts say that improving public awareness, and bio-security on small farms — the measures farmers take to protect their animals from disease, or prevent an infection from spreading if it does break out, including quarantining sick animals, decontaminating equipment, and killing rodents — could help restart the poultry industry in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh considering egg imports to offset high prices

The government of Bangladesh is considering allowing egg imports to help reduce local market prices, according to the country's Ministry of Commerce, which says that the price of eggs has gone up excessively for no discernible reason in the last couple weeks of March.
Eggs were selling in the local market between Tk 102 (US$1.25) and Tk 108 (US$1.32) per dozen on March 28, compared to between Tk 84 (US$1.03) and Tk 90 (US$1.10) during the same time in February. In 2011, a dozen eggs sold for between Tk 66 (US$0.81) and Tk 69 (US$0.84), so prices have increased 55 percent in the last year, according to Export Promotion Bureau statistics.
Ministry of Commerce officials said they will sit with egg producers and ask them to bring egg prices down within seven days. "If the price does not come to a tolerable level, traders will be allowed to import egg from abroad," said an official. Producers, on the other hand, say production is down from 15 million pieces per day to 5 million pieces per day, and that prices have increased legitimately. The government should allow the import of parent stock and bird flu vaccines, as well as bring poultry firms under regulation, to lower egg prices, say producers.  

Avian flu costs Bangladesh Tk 2 billion in first quarter 2011

Avian influenza has cost the Bangladesh poultry industry Tk 2 billion (US$27.6 million) in the first three months of the 2011 fiscal year, according to the Bangladesh division of the World's Poultry Science Association.
"The loss will be Tk 55 billion (US$757.9 million) if it is estimated from 2007," said WPSA Bangladesh Secretary General Abdus Salek. The country's poultry sector is currently worth Tk 250 billion (US$3.5 billion).
So far this year, officials have had to cull over 100,000 chickens due to bird flu. The most recent outbreak, at a farm in Gazipur, resulted in 30,000 chickens and 50,000 eggs being destroyed.

Bangladesh reports new bird flu outbreak

Authorities in Bangladesh have culled nearly 10,000 chickens in five districts as a fresh outbreak of bird flu has been detected in the country, according to a senior government official.
“We have detected avian influenza, known as H5N1, in four commercial poultry production farms and a household in five districts so far this month," said Muhammad Salehuddin Khan, director of Bangladesh's Fisheries and Live Stock Department."Some 9,950 birds on the farms and in the household and nearby areas of the country's western Natore, central Gazipur, eastern Narsingdi, and northern Gaibandha and Kurigram districts were culled this month," he said."We have taken special steps to stem the outbreak of the disease, and we are asking farmers to adopt more preventive measures," he said.
Muhammad said his department is yet to confirm the sources of fresh attacks of the disease, "but it may be due to germs of bird flu remained as we faced huge outbreak last winter," he said.However, he added that there had been no report of human infection of the disease in Bangladesh to date.