Bloomberg: Bird Flu Found in India, Malaysia Prompts Import Bans (Update4)

[PhilipShore]

Bloomberg
Bird Flu Found in India, Malaysia Prompts Import Bans (Update4)
Feb. 21

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=as5eokD7VAys&refer=us

eb. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Singapore, China and at least four other Asian countries imposed bans on some chicken imports after bird flu was found in India and Malaysia. Poultry prices plunged in India because of concern over the lethal H5N1 virus.

Shares of Leong Hup Holdings Bhd., Malaysia's biggest chicken supplier, dropped as much as 25 percent, leading other poultry stocks lower, after Singapore suspended imports of poultry and eggs from the Malaysian state of Selangor.

Chicken prices fell 42 percent Feb. 19 at the Ghazipur poultry market in New Delhi, India's biggest, the day after an outbreak was discovered in poultry in the western state of Maharashtra, said Shashi Kapur, president of the Poultry Federation of India. Jet Airways Ltd., the country's largest domestic carrier, took the meat off menus.

``Demand for poultry will definitely be affected in the short term as people will be concerned,'' Kapur, who owns the Kegg Farms Group in Gurgaon, a New Delhi suburb, said yesterday in an interview. ``It's a knee-jerk scare.''