Although the WHO last month declared Egypt free of bird flu, consumers remain cautious about putting poultry on the dinner table People are afraid of eating chicken nowadays, Pierre loza finds out. "We used to order two cages of chicken a day but now we are lucky to sell half a cage," says Samir, of Imbaba's Kasid Karim poultry shop. Across Egypt there are hundreds of small establishments that purchase poultry from wholesalers and slaughter them on the spot. Since November these small businesses have seen demand for poultry products shrink amid fears that the bird flue pandemic has reached Egypt. The small size of local poultry shops, which employ three to four people on average, means their ability to absorb economic shocks is restricted. "I work here and I haven't received my salary for a month. All the poultry shops are losing money. We barely make LE75 a day," said Samir. Poultry shop owners, whose overheads include utility bills, employees' salaries and poultry feed, are not the only ones feeling the pinch. "Our supplier is in the same situation. He has to pay for a truck and petrol. It does not make sense for him to come here and sell us one cage of chicken." The collapse in demand has pushed prices down from LE7 to LE5.5 per kilogramme, cutting profit margins to the bone. Establishments like Doqqi's Al-Sobki Protein are in a slightly better position since they sell a variety of meat. "The situation reminds me of the time mad cow disease started," says Shawqi El-Sobki, owner of the shop. El-Sobki believes the government could act to help lessen the burden small retailers face by subsidising bird feed. While poultry consumption has dropped demand for beef has risen. "From what I see in my shop demand for chicken has gone down by 60 per cent and demand for beef has risen by 10 per cent," he says. El-Sobki also owns a chicken farm which has had to reduce its production from 1,000 chickens a day to about 300. A veteran of the livestock industry, El-Sobki predicts that, "if the bird scare persists the economic costs will be enormous. Chicken farms will close and workers will start to be laid off. By the time consumption levels are back to normal the price of chicken will have doubled and that will be another disaster." Alaa Radwan, head of the meat, poultry and fish food industry association, sells chicken to everyone from the Egyptian army to restaurant chains and Red Sea hotels. "In this country we have made a success of the poultry industry. Over the last 20 years we moved from being a net importer to a net exporter of chickens," says Radwan. But with a production capacity of 5,000 chickens an hour, i.e. 300,000 a month, Radwan now faces a growing inventory. "Reducing production would increase costs since I would not be making use of economies of scale. The result is a mountain in my inventories," he said. Disappointed by negative media coverage, Radwan believes Egypt needs to adopt a new approach to the problem: "We should take advantage of the fact that we have been officially declared free of bird flu and start exporting to all the countries that are infected." A warning by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation that the H5N1 bird flu strain was likely to reach North Africa during the winter migratory season has not helped to allay the fears of consumers. Radwan insists, however, that hundreds of his employees interact with birds on a regular basis and not one case has been detected. "We check our birds constantly for all diseases and believe me, if there was anything to fear we would be the first to report it."
