Chicken goes missing from Kathmandu’s kitchens

Chicken that used to be one of the compulsory items in almost all kitchens in Kathmandu until a month ago has now disappeared from Kathmandu valley, thanks to the outbreak of bird flu.

One cannot find chicken in the butchers’ shops, neither do the retail shops dare to sell the eggs. Business in restaurants has also declined significantly after the people stopped visiting them to enjoy chicken momo, one of the most popular dishes of this city, fearing transmission of H1N1 virus. Luckily, no H1N1 virus was detected in humans in Nepal in four years after the detection of the first bird flu case in eastern Terai in 2009.

Now the festival season has begun and the denizens have greatly worried as the prices of mutton (he-goat meat) and fish have skyrocketed due to bird-flu outbreak. Meat is a key food during festivals in Kathmandu and elsewhere in Nepal.

After the outbreak of bird flu in Bhaktapur on July 16, the virus spread like wildfire in the valley where as many as 87 poultry farms were found infected as of August 20. The poultry farmers and the government were blamed for the spread of bird flu during the hot summer days and the failure in controlling it.

When chickens started dying in the farms of Bhakatpur, the farmers shifted the chickens to their farms located in neighbouring districts, which ultimately resulted in the spread of the disease in the neighbouring districts. The farmers even tried to supply the infected fowls in Terai and the local markets.

Although the government imposed a ban on the sale and supply of live chickens and other poultry products in a bid to control it, the government could not give continuity to the ban due to the pressure from farmers and lifted it a week later amidst opposition from the general people. But the lift only worsened the situation. The bird flu spread in entire Bhaktapur and in several areas in three other districts forcing the government to declare emergency zones.

According to officials, as of 20 August, the Rapid Response Teams deployed by the Department of Livestock Services in all three districts of the valley have slaughtered 971,756 fowls, destroyed 1,016,910 eggs and 72,751 kg feeds.

The loss incurred by the bird flu was estimated over Rs I billion while several workers have become jobless when poultry products were completely destroyed. The farmers who have engaged in poultry farms by taking bank loans were affected the most. In many places, the farmers fainted seeing the RRTs killing entire chickens.

The hatcheries have completely stopped producing chicks. Unable to bear the loss, the farmers have been demonstrating demanding compensation from the government. But the government has not provided any relief to the farmers.