Aid for poultry farmers
LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – Europe’s farm chief agreed yesterday to underwrite half of a bill likely to run into millions of euros to restore consumer confidence in poultry, given a hard knock by recent outbreaks of bird flu. EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel came under strong pressure from many of the EU’s 25 governments, especially France, Spain and Italy, to finance more – if not all – of the «poultry plans,» which will be presented in the next few weeks. Fischer Boel has said repeatedly that countries would do best to focus on cutting production of chicks and hatching eggs given the poultry industry’s short 42-day production cycle. «We will look into each plan and decide whether to approve it, in consultation with the management committee (of national EU experts),» she told a news conference. «It’s a system of first come, first served. I think we will see an immediate reaction by some member states,» she said. The Commission has ruled out some ideas floated in recent weeks, such as EU funding for private storage of poultry meat or for donating stocks as food aid. But Fischer Boel left the door open to examining requests, case by case, to finance measures that governments had already taken, reversing a previous insistence that the Commission would not consider «retroactivity.» Poultry sales have fallen sharply in several countries since late 2005, especially in Italy, Greece, France and Poland. While sales are still weak in some regions, consumer confidence appears to be returning slowly. «If member states are suffering severely, I’m sure their wish to solve the problem will be very visible in the applications that we will see,» Fischer Boel said, adding that Italy’s poultry sector seemed to be the worst hit by poor sales. Some EU countries, such as France and Poland, have already defined some of their demands, a few of which the Commission is almost certain to reject. Other states have been more vague. France wants the EU to subsidize private storage of poultry meat, compensate for stocks that can no longer be sold and for early poultry slaughter if export markets collapse suddenly. Poland has requested new subsidies for poultry slaughter and processing, aid for storage and a widening of the list of poultry products that qualify for EU export subsidies. «We have given a clear signal to the sector and to consumers so hopefully we can return to normal consumption levels,» Austria’s Agriculture Minister Josef Proell said.
