UK's bird flu hits US chicken companies' shares
Source: Reuters
(Adds government surveillance plan, background, updates share prices) By Bob Burgdorfer CHICAGO, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Stocks in the largest U.S. chicken companies were lower on Monday after the deadly bird flu hit a turkey farm in England, but U.S. experts said there was no danger to the $38.5 billion U.S. chicken industry. "It has to be a knee-jerk reaction to the bird flu," Paul Aho, economist at Poultry Perspective, said of the drop in stocks of such companies as Pilgrim's Pride Corp. <PPC.N> and Sanderson Farms Inc <SAFM.O>. On Monday, Britain killed 160,000 turkeys following the outbreak of the bird flu on a farm in eastern England. Japan and Russia quickly banned British poultry. During previous outbreaks overseas, the U.S. chicken industry was hurt by a drop in exports as consumers abroad stopped eating chicken. But consumers may not be scared this time, said Aho. "I think we are wiser now. We don't panic when we see these things," said Aho. Cooking chicken will kill the virus and Aho said consumers appeared to have learned that. British supermarket chains said on Monday that sales of chicken were holding up. The outbreak in England will prompt increased surveillance by the U.S. Agriculture Department of migratory birds along the Atlantic flyway. "We have to expand surveillance now with the English outbreak...," said J. Burton Eller, USDA's deputy under secretary for marketing and regulatory programs. "We've been worried about the Pacific flyway, but this is a whole new threat on the Atlantic flyway." Eller said migratory birds in this hemisphere share nesting ground in Greenland and Iceland with European birds. The National Chicken Council expressed concern that the British turkeys were infected despite being confined to barns. Commercially raised U.S. chickens and turkeys are also kept in barns, which had been seen as a safeguard against the flu. "We will be interested to hear the results of the investigation on how it got in there," said Richard Lobb, spokesman for the National Chicken Council. The H5N1 avian flu virus has killed 165 people in 10 countries -- Turkey, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Iraq, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Nigeria and Cambodia. It has infected 271, giving it a more than 50 percent fatality rate, but experts are unsure if some people may have had less serious infections that went undetected. In response to outbreaks overseas, the United States has tightened biosecurity at poultry farms as well as increased surveillance of migratory birds to keep the flu out. "The U.S. poultry industry has thought this through. They know what they are going to do if it is found here and how they are going to contain it," said Len Steiner, an owner of Steiner Consulting, a food industry consulting firm. A case of the deadly flu in a commercial flock would cause the flock to be destroyed and possibly surrounding flocks as well. An outbreak here could have overseas buyers banning chicken from the infected area. Exports are important to the U.S. chicken industry, which sells about 15 percent of its production overseas. Shares of Tyson Foods, the nation's largest meat producer, closed up 4 cents at $18.16 per share, but earlier had dropped to $17.99; shares of Pilgrim's Pride, the largest U.S. chicken producer, closed down 74 cents at $31.32; and shares of Sanderson Farms were also down $1.66 at the close to end at $30.62. (Additional reporting by Christopher Doering, Washington)
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