By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Jan 31 2004 (IPS)

Tandoori chicken, done in an open clay oven and the hottest item on north Indian menus, has vanished following a scare – some say unwarranted – that the avian flu bug is about to cross over the border from neighbouring Pakistan.

”I don’t know what the fuss is all aboutà we don’t import chickens from Pakistan,” said Shahbaz Ali who, until the scare this week ran a popular street corner business roasting whole birds marinated overnight in spices and herbs.

To add to Ali’s woes, Friday’s papers were full of a ban ordered by Union Health Minister Sushma Swaraj on the importation of all poultry meat.

Swaraj’s order may have little real impact on the progress of the virus across the border because India, in fact, does not import live birds either from Pakistan or elsewhere. A small quantity of processed meat is imported by luxury hotels from the United States and Israel, but this is to satisfy the demands of foreigners and well-to-do clientele.

Pakistan is among the 10 or more countries, most of them in East Asia, where the flu has been detected. It first appeared in chickens in the southern port city of Karachi and killed four million birds.

But Swaraj’s order of an importation into India has, temporarily at least, eaten into the business of restaurant owners and their suppliers here in the capital, whose denizens are said to devour at least 200,000 birds a day going by the figures available at the main wholesale market at Ghazipur on the eastern edge of the city.

”Sales have dropped to less than 30 percent and distress sales have already begun at Ghazipur,” said Manjeet Singh, president of the Delhi Poultry Suppliers Association. ”It is the poultry farmers who are going to be worst hit by this scare,” he added.

With general elections barely two months away, Swaraj cannot afford to take chances of a health disaster happening. Apart from banning imports of poultry, passengers arriving from Pakistan on the newly restored bus and rail services across the border are being subjected to screening for symptoms of avian flu.

Travel between India and Pakistan came under severe restrictions following an armed attack on India’s Parliament two years ago by Islamic groups that New Delhi said were operating from Pakistani territory.

But a thaw in relations and a solemn pledge by Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf to crack down on cross-border militancy has seen the restoration of rail and air services between the two countries in January.

Anyone showing signs of a fever, sore throat and body ache – typical of ordinary influenza as well – are being given a second look by officials of the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF) that supervises the crossings.

The centre has ordered a particularly tight watch in Indian-controlled Kashmir and states like Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat, which share borders with Pakistan.

Other Countries where avian flu has surfaced include Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.

News reports from Islamabad said the outbreak has hit Pakistan’s poultry industry hard, with prices of chicken and eggs dropping by 50 percent in spite of an official ban on the movement of chicken from areas under suspicion.

Unlike the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, which has caused several human deaths in Vietnam and Thailand, the H7N1 and H9N1 subtypes that have surfaced in Pakistan are safe for humans, according to an internal document of the Union Ministry of Agriculture.

According to the document, India was hit by the H9N1 subtype in 2003. But this proved to non-pathogenic and was brought under control by scientists at the prestigious Indian Veterinary Research Instiute in (IVRI) in the central city of Bhopal.

Bird flu viruses are transmitted through the air and are released in nasal secretions and the faeces of infected birds, the same report adds. While transmission is possible from birds to humans it cannot be passed from one human being to another, it says.

Still, human to human transmission remains the biggest fear of health officials in the region and around the world.

As ample precaution, India has set up an elaborate ‘Joint Monitoring Group’ consisting of medical and agricultural officials and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to ensure that the disease remains under control.

Shigeru Omi, director of the WHO’s Western Pacific region has been quoted as saying that one danger comes from the possibility that the deadly H5N1 strain could combine with a human influenza virus that was moving toward the region and cause millions of deaths around the world.

Meanwhile, the avian flu has provided yet another opportunity for cooperation between India and Pakistan, neighbours who are trying to put a more than five-decade-old history of bitter relations over possession of the disputed territory of Kashmir behind them.

India, the world’s fourth largest poultry producer after China, the United States and Russia with recorded annual production now touching 1.5 billion birds annually, has said it is willing to share technical expertise and experience with Pakistan and other countries.

”We can, for example, help develop a vaccine,” said Anuradha Desai, chair of the giant Venkateshwara Hatcheries (VH) group, claiming that Indian poultry technology is the best outside the United States.

According to Desai, avian flu is not new in Pakistan but the country has limited diagnostic and research facilities to cope with outbreaks.

Other producers like B S Yadav, general manager of the Pune-based Integrated Poultry, said India could actually take advantage of the safety of poultry in this country to increase exports and make up for the losses suffered in many Asian countries. For instance, Thailand – Asia’s largest exporter of poultry, is reeling from the bird flu.

Most of India’s sizeable poultry production is consumed locally and very little is processed and exported, according to A R Subbarao of the Compound Livestock Feed Manufacturers Association.

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