UAE: Bird flu fears halve chicken sales

Bird flu fears have seen chicken consumption plunge nearly 50 percent in the United Arab Emirates forcing several poultry farms to close, an industry official said.

"Consumption has gone down between 45 and 50 percent," Sheikh Hamed al-Hamed, who heads the UAE's poultry association, told reporters at one of his farms outside Abu Dhabi.

"This decline in consumption has forced us to cut production by 30 percent and many small farms have gone out of business. We have also been freezing surplus meat and selling it at cheap prices."

So far in the Gulf region only Kuwait, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia have announced cases of bird flu on their territory.

Source: Yahoo! News from AFP: Bird flu fears halve UAE chicken sales

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