The Hindu Business Line : Bird flu blues in Pakistan

ON the morning PIA flight from Karachi to Islamabad, one is a little surprised to be served a `vegetarian' breakfast... a delicious paratha, which just melts in the mouth, with a dish made of channa and potato. This is surprising because this is the land that hard-core non-vegetarians would love. Whether at a roadside restaurant or a prestigious club, any of Lahore's street side food outlets or upmarket places like the Pakistani restaurant at Karachi's Sheraton... the kababs, lamb chops, tandoori fare and seafood is simply out of the world.

But it is only on the PIA return flight, when the dinner included lamb biriyani, that the penny dropped. Pakistan International Airline had stopped serving not only chicken but also the standard omelette for breakfast because of the bird flu pangs.

So when a friend's family takes one out for dinner to one of Islamabad's Chinese restaurant, his wife tells the head waiter quite sternly, "No chicken whatsoever for us please." Hearing her, one winced at the thought of the egg-fried rice and chicken noodles one had consumed for lunch. But nevertheless, with the standard chicken corn soup out of bounds, one cheerfully said, "Let's try a vegetable soup for a change," and zeroed in on a tomato soup, thinking it to be the safest.

But the chef had obviously thought that the natural sour of the tomato was not enough, and had added an extra dose of sourness from various sources to make it virtually inedible. Obviously, not used to too many vegetarians patronising his restaurant, the waiter smirked, "Tomato khatta nahi hoga tou kya hoga? Aap logo ne sab kuch chchod kar tomato ko kyo pasand kiya?" (What can tomato be if not sour? Why did you select tomato of all the things?) Anyway, what followed, prawns, fish and lamb, were delicious enough to forgive him for the atrocious starter.

Chicken then, is being avoided like the plague in Pakistan, even though many people, particularly those in the poultry trade, try to explain how unnecessary this fright is, and that the bird flu strain found in a section of poultry in Pakistan a few weeks ago, had nothing to do with the deadly strain of the virus that can influence human beings.

Muhammad Hussain Mehanti, a Member of Parliament from the Jamat-e- Islami party and owner of Paradise Poultry said, "There is an unnecessary panic being created by the media. It is wrong to say that Pakistan has the bird flu problem. Poultry is a big industry here and chicken provides the human need for protein pretty quickly and cheaply too. There is no problem here but health is such a sensitive issue that people do not want to take any risk."

The result is that the prices of chicken and eggs have crashed in the Pakistan market. Eggs here cost more than twice the price in India; and depending on the season the price can touch a whopping Rs 45 for a dozen. Normally, a kg of chicken costs around Rs 50 to Rs 60, but now the prices have crashed. When bird flu fears were at their worst last month, chicken prices had crashed to Rs 20 to Rs 22 a kg. "Right now, the Pakistan Poultry Association has fixed the price at Rs 42 a kg, but chicken is available in the market at Rs 30 to Rs 32. Our industry is making huge losses as the birds are just piling up," Mehanti said.

He said that with the domestic market being huge — one can imagine that having seen during previous visits a huge number of chargas (chicken) being roasted at roadside restaurants in both Lahore and Karachi — there is not much export of poultry. Much more than the exports, it was the slump in demand at home that had hurt the poultry business. Trying to restore confidence that poultry products were safe, Pakistan's Minister for Food, Agriculture and Livestocks, Sardar Yar Muhammad Rindh, appeared on television, seated before a huge table filled with chicken roast, chicken tikka etc., and gobbled down the stuff, saying, "See, this is all very safe."

But so far, all this seems to have had little effect. Azhar Bankukwala, a Karachi businessman, points out that during the wedding season, the main discussion in each home used to be "what to substitute the chicken dish with... and people would zero in on extra mutton and beef dishes, because you don't want to order a whole lot of food which might not get consumed. As it is people are reluctant to consume chicken cooked in the safety of their homes."

Mehanti added that though prices continued to remain depressed, the worst seemed to be over and confidence was returning.

Maroof Siddiqi of the Pakistan Poultry Association added in a statement that the poultry sector has "regained 10 per cent of its lost business in the current week, as sales of chicken meat and eggs have started to pick up."