Poultry farmers plagued by H7N9 virus news TUOITRENEWS   A chicken small trader is pictured at a market in Ho Chi Minh City May 1, 2013 While there is no official information that the deadly bird flu virus H7N9 has entered Vietnam from China, local poultry farmers are already hurt as prices have slumped over poor consumption. Consumers are increasingly hesitant to have chicken in their meals following news reports that the new bird flu virus strain has killed several people in China, while the Vietnamese Health Ministry has warned that the new strain is more dangerous than the H5N1 strain. “The Vietnamese chicken breeding industry is on the brink of bankruptcy again,” lamented H., sales executive of a chicken raising company in the southern province of Dong Nai. Industrial chicken prices have dropped dramatically from VND38,000 a kg to only VND19,500 a kg, and the downward trend is not going to stop, he said. Poultry farmers repeatedly suffered losses for the whole of 2012, and their hope to recoup investment this year has now faded. “Farmers now incur a VND10,000 a kg loss,” H. said. The difficulty is rooted in the H7N9 virus news from China, according to Phi Long, who runs a chicken farm in Dong Nai. “What’s unreasonable is that during the recent outbreaks of the H7N9 strain in China which began March 23, no localities in Vietnam have announced bird flu outbreaks, according to the Animal Health Agency,” Long said. “News regarding the epidemic outbreaks should be carried in a way that will not affect the domestic farming industry,” he added. Even though local poultry farmers have equipped themselves with strict epidemic preventive methods, and competent agencies have granted safety certificates for their products, consumers still turn their back on domestic chicken, Long said. “Our sales have dropped 30 percent since the news of the H7N9 outbreaks in China,” H. said. Local consumers have been frightened by the way local media described and reported a disease outbreak, said Tran Quang Trung, owner of a pig farm in Dong Nai. For instance, when only a few pigs died of blue ear disease in a central province, TV, radio, newswire, and newspapers ran a series of reports as if an epidemic had already broken out, he said. “Then I knew for sure that pork prices would soon slump following such news.”