India’s import restrictions on chicken legs and some other farm products from the US due to fear of `low-intensity' bird flu are not in line with multilateral trade rules, a World Trade Organisation panel has ruled.

This means New Delhi will now not be able impose restrictions on imports of farm products, including poultry products, from countries reporting low-intensity bird flu on health grounds which would in turn open the Indian market to low-priced chicken legs from the US.

The US had dragged India to the WTO on the issue in 2012 claiming that the restrictions were based on ``unscientific’’ reasons, which the dispute settlement panel has upheld.

New Delhi will now examine if it would challenge the verdict in the Appellate Body, the highest decision making body of the WTO. “We can definitely appeal before the Appellate Body. But in this case it is the Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries that will have to take a call as it was their notification that was under challenge. We will consult them,” a Commerce Ministry official told Business Line.

The US had argued that the ban imposed by India on import of poultry products from countries’ reporting outbreaks of low pathogenic notifiable avian influenza have no basis in science and was also not supported by World Organisation for Animal Health.

Although India keeps lifting its ban on import of poultry products from the US when the country reports that it is free of avian influenza, it immediately re-imposes it if there is report of outbreak in any part of the country. Because of the uncertainty, US poultry exporters have not been able to export much to India.

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