Mishandling epidemics ups prices and forces rationing



About one in five egg-laying chickens and ducks have been culled since the ongoing bird flu epidemic first struck the nation last month.



The result is a scarcity of eggs. Now, big retailers are adopting a system of rationing ― no more than 30 eggs per purchase. Prices are up about 30 percent.



Now, employees of big bakery group SPC, which runs Paris Baguette and Paris Croissant franchise, are forced to buy eggs on their way to work. Street vendors or small eateries are forced to reduce the size of their servings, not being able to raise their prices.



The government has mishandled the situation.



On Monday, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, came up with the idea of airlifting eggs from avian flu-clean countries. Imports from Japan and China are ruled out because they are on the migratory paths of Avian flu-infected birds. The airlifting idea was all but given up days later, ostensibly due to unaffordable prices but in practice because of farmers and retailers' lobbies.



The ministry was willing to reduce the current 27-percent tariffs and subsidize airfare but some criticized it, arguing that the imports would be over 40 percent more expensive than domestic eggs. Some insiders blame the poultry industry's opposition for the ministry's about-face. The government faced a huge backlash after it imported cabbage from China in 2010 when domestic crops were devastated by a combination of a typhoon and disease.



Additionally, the ministry's vaccine development effort has received a rebuke from experts for being unrealistic. For the Avian-flu, two types of protein in the pathogen can theoretically produce 198 different strains of the virus. Avian-flu is more like a cold as its name indicates, so a one-fits-all vaccine development is harder. For foot and mouth disease, vaccines for all seven strains are available.



Besides, it is hard to predict whether the vaccine will help mutate the virus into one that can make it contagious to humans. The United States didn't use vaccines, rather opting to cull 50 million fowl to fight its Avian-flu epidemic.



Also initial-stage responses leave a lot to be desired. The ministry gave its assurances that by the end of the year, things would be stabilized with no shortages of eggs or fowl meat, citing the closure of schools, the major consumers, for winter vacation. But it didn't consider practices of hoarding along the chain of producers to retailers. As in the 2010 cabbage crisis, consumers are again holding the short end of the deal.



