read the article. smugglers take chickens and eggs across the border..............famous family with chicken fast food chain operates from Guatamala, fast food chain Sth America to New York.............. worried if the bird flu gets in there.................low pathogenic strain found there......... just snippets of info to show how devastating to chicken businesses this flu can be..............regardless of people becoming sick or dying
Wary Guatemala chases chicken smugglers Email Print Normal font Large font January 9, 2006 - 8:49AM
Guatemala is cracking down on chicken and egg smugglers following an outbreak of low pathogenic bird flu on the other side of its porous border with Mexico, the country's agriculture minister said on Sunday.
"We're trying to seal the border against all contraband products," Agriculture Minister Alvaro Aguilar told Reuters.
Mexican authorities killed some 300 birds after detecting a near harmless strain, which cannot be transmitted to humans, in homesteads in the southern state of Chiapas last month.
The bird flu found in Mexico was not the H5N1 virus that is slowly spreading across the globe, beginning in Asia.
Mexico has said no other cases of the disease have been detected, but Aguilar said even a benign strain could hurt local producers and that the Central American nation was not taking any chances.
Guatemala has banned cheap Mexican eggs and poultry for years despite a free-trade agreement, citing sanitary concerns about its neighbour's poultry.
But smugglers often move contraband chicken and eggs, which are past their sell-by dates, across a border that is unguarded jungle river in places, selling them in neighbourhood markets across the country.
Scientists cannot agree whether the content of eggs from bird-flu infected chickens are free from the virus, but say there is some risk because the surface of shells may still be tainted with virus-laden excreta.
Aguilar said the country was beefing up border vehicle checks, but acknowledged difficulties posed by 'blind spots' on a frontier crossed annually by thousands of illegal migrants hoping to reach the United States.
"We are reinforcing border controls, but there is a lot of smuggling, above all of eggs, and it's difficult to control," Eduardo Spiegeler, head of poultry health at the agriculture ministry, told local radio.
"People don't appreciate the consequences this trade could have," he said, urging Guatemalans to buy only local produce.
Poultry production is dominated in Guatemala by the powerful Gutierrez family, whose Pollo Campero fast-food chicken chain has branches from South America to New York.
