Ghana stops poultry exports

"Ghana halted poultry exports and began farm-to-farm checks around the capital Accra on Thursday, a day after the West African country declared its first outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu." ... For more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L038610.htm

This recent outbreak will surely add to the livelihoods insecurity of many small scale poultry raisers who are left vulnerable to increasing cheap poultry imports.

"Ghana imported 26,000 tonnes of chicken in 2002, mostly from the European Union, where farmers receive generous subsidies. Two years later this figure had almost doubled, to about 40,000 tonnes. The annual import bill currently hovers around 30 million dollars.

In contrast, the domestic market -- which supplied 95 percent of Ghana's poultry requirements in 1992 -- only provided a dismal 11 percent by 2002. Unconfirmed estimates currently put the domestic poultry supply at single-digit figures."

For more: http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=32293