China Bird Flu Hits Poultry, Soybean Demand And Silences Bird Markets

China’s bird flu crisis is a slow-moving health crisis that has so far killed about 18 percent of infected patients. There are about 110 known victims of the H7N9 strain of influenza, and 22 of them have already died.

In addition to the health hazard, H7N9 bird flu is also a huge economic catastrophe. This particular strain has a higher mortality rate in humans than tuberculosis, but it may cause little or no disease in birds.

That means that a bird can look healthy and still carry China’s new bird flu. And that means in turn that Chinese authorities have felt forced to close bird markets and kill a large number of poultry that may — or may not — be infected.

Chicken is a cheap source of protein. Now, however, its popularity has plummeted in the wake of the H7N9 crisis.

Yum Brands, which owns KFC (once known as Kentucky Fried Chicken), Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, gets half its profits from China. As a direct result of the bird flu crisis, its first quarter earnings dropped 27 percent compared to last year’s first quarter. Ouch.

A Reuters report yesterday said that poultry sales have collapsed by 80 percent in eastern China, the region hardest hit by the H7N9 bird flu other than the city of Shanghai. Sales have fallen 30 percent elsewhere.

Since about half of all soybean is sold to feed poultry, soybean sales are also in freefall.

In Shanghai, almost 200 bird markets have been closed — perhaps forever — and over 100,000 birds have been slaughtered. Even the song in China’s pet bird markets has fallen silent, and a major pigeon association has halted the sport of pigeon racing.

At this time, there is little or no evidence of human-to-human contact, but the slow-rolling disaster could still spread.

As The Inquisitr reported yesterday, the first case of H7N9 bird flu reported outside China has been confirmed in Taiwan. A 53-year-old businessman there, with no known contacts to poultry, is in serious condition.

He had recently visited Shanghai, one of the first Chinese cities hit by China’s H7N9 bird flu.

[feral pigeon photo Laura Hadden via flickr and Creative Commons]