Poultryindonesia.com, Topic. LIVE poultry market plays major role in distribution of poultry products. Approximately 75% of broilers in the country channeled through this traditional market. Even in Jakarta, the capital of the 220 million population country.
Some poultry industry players said that market share for poultry products from chicken slaughtering house is just 20%-30% now. The number is considered as slow since the modern slaughter house and processing plants have been started since more than ten years ago in Indonesia.
Daily consumption of broilers of the world fourth most populous country is about 2.3 million birds, with 45% of the number is absorbed by Jakarta market. It means: with more than 9 million of population, Jakarta consumes around 1 million birds per day.
With such a big number of demand, Jakarta rely on other producing areas supply for their poultry products such as West Java, Central Java, East Java, Lampung, and South Sumatra.
Most of the chicken from other provinces go to traditional slaughtering houses and home industries which account for more than 500 units in the capital. One trader,— which also act as slaughter – commonly cut some 100 chickens and sell the carcass directly to the consumers in traditional market. While bigger traders which cut more than 1,000 birds per day are able to supply supermarkets and hypermarkets such as Carrefour, Hypermart, Giant, etc.
This kind of slaughter house is considered as traditional. With traditional equipments and unsaved handling, obviously the quality of these products remains questionable. However, it remains consumers’ preference due to the lower prices and unconsciousness on the hygiene and healthy products.
One of the player said that Indonesian consumers haven’t appreciate premium products as they supposed to. “The modern slaughterhouses’ products, in many ways, are consumers good. But the consumers treat them as commodity,” Eko Sandjojo, President Director of Sierad Produce explains.
INDONESIA will re-arrange zoning for the poultry industry, banning farms and slaughterhouses in the teeming capital in a bid to stop the spread of the bird flu virus that has killed four people, an official said last month.
“Looking ahead we will rearrange the poultry industry in Indonesia to prevent the passing of zoonotic diseases from animals to humans,” Mathur Riady, director-general of poultry at the Agriculture Ministry told reporters.
“For instance, there should not be any slaughtering houses for chickens in greater Jakarta,” he said. “A metropolitan city like Jakarta should not turn into the home of poultry farms,” Riady added. He did not say whether the new rules would cover backyard slaughtering.
It was unclear when the new measures would be effective, and Riady conceded that the move to ban slaughterhouses and farms in the capital, a congested city of about 12 million people, would face social and economic problems.
Some poultry farms in greater Jakarta lie near or in the middle of residential areas.
Many urban-area households in Indonesia also keep livestock, especially chickens, in their yards.
Riady said the number of chickens killed by bird flu was 800,000 so far in 2005, from 5.3 million in the whole of 2004.
Chicken traders and farmers in Jakarta said bird flu fears have sparked a sharp drop in sales.
“Business has been devastated,” said Toni, 26, taking a break from his job at a poultry wholesale shop in a crowded residential neighborhood. The number of birds he sells every day has plummeted by 50 percent to around 1,000, forcing him to cut his prices by about the same margin.
The government plans to spend 134 billion rupiah ($13 million) this year to cull poultry in the affected areas, Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono said. “It may be right that it is an epidemic in Jakarta and Tangerang,’’ which is 25 kilometers (16 miles) west of the capital, Apriyantono said. “So that’s why we are concentrating on our efforts in Jakarta and Tangerang.’’
It is also considering revising poultry farming policies as part of efforts to reduce the potential for animal-to-human transmission of the deadly bird flu virus, Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono says. “Ideally farms wouldn’t be close to residential areas,” Anton said.
He said the power to relocate poultry farms was currently the authority of regional administrations.In order to halt the spread of the avian influenza virus, Indonesia also plans to draft a law that will allow it to punish farmers who refuse to kill their poultry.
“The problem is so huge and the international community’s capacity to reach each and every chicken farmer is very small,’’ Benni Sormin, assistant country representative for the Food and Agriculture Organization in Indonesia, said in an interview.
The Indonesian government has set up a polymerase chain reaction lab to test blood samples for the H5N1 virus in eight provinces. The technique, which is known as PCR, is used to create copies of specific fragments of DNA. PCR amplifies a single DNA molecule into billions of molecules.
In regard of the government’s plan to do mass culling Anton Apriyantono said: “If we declare one area highly infected, we are going to do a mass slaughter . . . funds will not be a problem — if it needs to be done then we will do it with all our resources.”
Something approaching panic seems to be taking hold across the country as the perception emerges that the bird flu outbreak is steadily getting out of control.
Chicken and duck breeders have been hit hardest by the outbreak as demand for fowl plummets.
“Only a few people bought my free-range chickens today, although I tried to convince everybody that they are all healthy,” said Ali Murtadho, a trader in Kediri, East Java.
Some residents in Jakarta and East Java have released or sold their pet birds and chickens for fear of contracting the virus, which has killed four people in the country in the last three months.
In the East Kalimantan capital of Samarinda, even a cat was vaccinated as Governor launched a campaign to raise public awareness of the outbreak.
Biosecurity measures intended to quarantine infected areas have proved to be ineffective as poultry producing areas here are widely dispersed, making it difficult for the government to fully apply the necessary steps.
“We admit that the outbreak is difficult to contain as its source is still unclear,” said Apriyantono after a meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Anton said bird flu outbreaks in other countries could be contained easily as poultry farms were concentrated in certain areas.
During the meeting, the government also agreed to declare a region “highly infected” if 20 percent of its poultry population was found to be infected.
The Jakarta Farming Agency, in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture’s Directorate General of Livestock Services, plans to take additional samples from birds and poultry at markets throughout the capital. About 80 percent of traditional (PD Pasar Jaya’s) 151 markets have poultry trading areas.
