JEDDAH, 21 February 2006 — Saudi Arabia is expected to slap a ban on the import of birds and poultry from Egypt after cases of bird flu were detected in that country, said an official from the Ministry of Agriculture.
“Our policy is to ban import of birds and poultry from any country where cases of bird flu have been detected,” Jaber Al-Shehri, director of the ministry’s branch office in Jeddah, told Arab News.
“We have stopped importing from Asian countries with the exception of a few companies that have been proven to be disease-free,” he said.
According to a ministry official quoted by AFP news agency, the Kingdom has already banned poultry imports from Egypt.
But Al-Shehri said until yesterday his office had not received any such instructions.
Authorities in Cairo said Sunday that poultry has tested positive for the deadly H5N1 virus in several provinces across Egypt despite the government’s efforts to contain the disease.
Al-Shehri said the ban would not affect business in the Kingdom as only a limited quantity of birds and poultry is imported from Egypt. The bulk of our bird and poultry imports come from Germany and Netherlands, he pointed out.
Saudi companies supply most of the Kingdom’s poultry demand.
Al-Shehri confirmed that no cases of bird flu have so far been detected in the Kingdom but did not rule out the possibility of its reaching the Kingdom. He referred to the government’s efforts to prevent a bird flu outbreak in the country.
A Saudi medical society also spoke about the strong possibility of avian flu spreading in the Kingdom.
“There is a possibility of the disease appearing among the Kingdom’s birds in large scale as it can spread through migrating birds,” said Dr. Muhammad Al-Hajjaj, president of the Saudi Medical and Chest Surgery Society.
The society advised farmers and poultry firms not to touch dead or sick birds and keep them in cages so that they would not mix with other birds. Al-Hajjaj said the disease still does not pose any danger to humans. The H5N1 strain has claimed at least 90 lives, mostly Asians, since late 2003. Experts fear the virus could mutate into a strain that could be transmitted easily among humans.
