Mangalore, November 13: Chicken sales have plummeted drastically in the coastal city of Mangalore over bird flu fears and thousands of people engaged in the poultry industry are in distress.
Many Mangaloreans are skipping poultry products, especially while eating out despite the fact that not a single case of bird-flue has been reported in the coastal district after the outbreak of H5N1 virus on the premises of the Central Poultry Development Organization (CPDO) at Hesaragatta in Bangalore last month, which claimed the lives of around 3,600 turkeys.
Poultry dealers in the religion say sales have dropped a lot in the past three weeks. "Hotels and restaurants have reduced their poultry dishes," said a chicken dealer at Kankanady market in Mangalore. His sales plunged from about 500 kgs per day to 300 kgs per day.
This is despite the wholesale price of chicken, both live and meat, seeing a huge dip of 20% to 30%.
Karnataka has 44 lakh poultry farm families, while two lakh people work in some 25,000 stalls in this part.
According to Karnataka Poutry Traders' Association, chicken stalls used to sell four lakh kgs of meat daily but now all of a sudden off take had dipped to 1 to 1.5 lakh kgs a day, hitting about 60 per cent of the normal business.
Association General Secretary K N Nagaraju said trying to allay fears in the minds of the people clarified that avian influenza (H5N1) broke out only at CPDO, leading to deaths of only Turkeys.
"All other chicken produced in Karnataka, like broiler, are unaffected. There is not a single case of poultry farm labourer or those working in chicken stalls or those who ate chicken having been infected with bird flu,” he said adding that experts have said chicken cooked above 70 degrees celsius was safe for eating.
However, prominent restaurants of the city have not reduced the prices of chicken items in their menu.
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