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The Indian hatchery industry has a 5000-year-old legacy. However, it came of age only in the twentieth century when a few Christian missionary organizations and some Englishmen brought high quality exotic chicken breeds into India. The poultry farming at that time was limited to backyard farming and was maintained under peasant husbandry practices. India’s commercial poultry production came into existence after the advent of the planning era. Although India still accounts for a very small share in global poultry production and consumption, the Indian poultry industry has been growing at a rate of 15-20 percent during recent decades.
Remarkably, the Indian poultry industry has seen marvelous progress since post independence and is now a Rs 65 billion mega-industry providing employment to 1.5 million people. The industry accounts for about 2 percent of the total GDP of India. With an annual output of 30,000 million eggs and 1,000 million broilers, which yield 5 lakh tonnes of poultry meat, India ranks as the fourth largest producer of eggs and eighth largest producer of poultry broilers in the world. At present, just four states—Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tamil Nadu—account for more than 50 percent of the total output of eggs and broilers in the country. The country’s poultry practice has witnessed a metamorphosis during the last three decades: from a small backyard operation of the mid-sixties to the well-structured, market-oriented enterprises of today. Several breakthroughs in poultry science and technology have led to the development of genetically superior birds capable of high production; even under adverse, hot climatic conditions. The future is bright with a growing domestic market, rapid industrialization and economic liberalization.
Bird flu repercussions
However, in this healthy scenario, the emergence of bird flu heralds apprehension. With the recent outbreak of bird flu in South-East Asia, several countries, especially Asian countries, have introduced several preventive initiatives to battle against the bird flu. The latest outbreak, which seems to have begun around August-October 2003 and has since spread across ten Asian countries, appears to be the most severe. Japan, China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Thailand are some of the affected countries.
The aftermath of the pandemic witnessed several initiatives and preventive measures such as the banning of chicken consumption and ceasing the exports from flu-affected countries of the world, to the culling of the birds as well. In the current campaign against the epidemic, already 25 million poultry birds, across 10 affected countries in Asia have been slaughtered. During the 2003 bird flu outbreak in the Netherlands, 30 million birds (out of a total bird population of 100 million) were killed within a week. Experts believe that this was chiefly responsible for preventing the disease from spreading further as well as averting a human influenza pandemic.
Besides its toll on health and lives, these pandemics have severe impact on the financial health, worldwide. The pandemic caused by the spread of bird flu resulted in economic chaos, halting global trade and forcing stock markets to close down. In the recent past, the bird flu had devastating effects on the food, tourism, airline and insurance industry. In economic terms, an AI (avian influenza) epidemic, especially if it is HPAI (highly pathogenic AI), is disastrous for the poultry industry and farmers of affected countries. Even though the poultry population culled was less than 1 per cent of the total inventory of the region, the economic repercussions on local economies, particularly on commercial poultry operations and small holders, were severe.
India’s great escape
Interestingly, India seems to have escaped the recent spread of the HPAI infection, or infection by H5N1 or H9 and H7 subtypes, which have affected Pakistan. In fact, the HPAI virus has never posed a threat to Indian poultry. There might be reasons other than providence for this. The possible reasons are that, one, India does not quite fall in the migratory routes of waterfowl from the north, and, two, Indian culinary practices do not include the consumption of exotic wild birds. Thus the wet markets in India do not stock such birds alongside domestic poultry.
In the Indian context, if not anything else, the Asian outbreak of the highly pathogenic bird flu has highlighted the importance of promoting and strengthening veterinary research and animal husbandry as a discipline. However, retail markets in India, not much unlike its counterparts in South-East Asia, leave much to be desired in terms of hygiene, sanitation and overcrowding. Thus, though effective surveillance and vaccination measures are very much in place to contain any infection, and the country’s poultry industry is well developed with implementation of proper bio-security measures, one cannot rule out the possibility of a bird-induced epidemic in India, in the near future. The saving grace is that though we do not have an exhaustive preventive mechanism against bird flu, we at least have the technology and expertise to handle an eventuality of that nature.
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