Thursday, 22 November 2007: DAMMAM - The Ministry of Agriculture has announced that it will compensate owners of birds that were culled during the past few days as a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of the H5N1 "bird flu" virus. The owners will have to request compensation from the Ministry during a specified time period, after which the amount of their compensation will be decided according to poultry prices in the Market.
Sources said that the total compensation is expected to be in millions of riyals, since more than two million birds were culled during the past days - a market value of more than SR5 million.
Meanwhile, poultry breeders in Saudi Arabia have estimated that their sales slumped by 80 percent as a result of the bird flu pandemic, says Ayman Al-Rashid, Director General of Al-Rashid Poultry Project.
Al-Rashid also indicated that Saudi Arabia is self-sufficient in poultry and exports production excess.
According to Al-Rashid, poultry top the list of meat consumed by Saudis at 60% of total meat consumed.
He added that breeding poultry requires 15 months, which would cause project owners to incur heavy losses.
Ali Al-Munajem, Chairman of the Board of Abdullah Al-Munajem & Sons Company, estimates Saudi imports of frozen poultry at 250,000 tons per year worth SR 1.5 billion.
He indicated that the sales of frozen poultry have gone down by 25 percent at the heels of the pandemic's outbreak as a result of poor awareness on the part of the consumers who do not know the difference between frozen and local products.
Al-Munajem also said that the national breeding farms which were hit the hardest by the pandemic are leased to self-employed expatriates who have neglected health safeguards, allowing these farms to turn into hotbeds for the disease.
On Monday, four government authorities declared a state of alert and decreed the culling of all birds at the pigeon market in southern Riyadh.
For its part, the Ministry of Agriculture stressed that it has followed all necessary preventive and precautionary measures to contain the pandemic and to prevent it from spreading to other areas.
By Mohammed Al-Inezy
© The Saudi Gazette 2007
