The spread of avian influenza in chickens across 10 Asian countries has devastated the region's poultry industry, but so far has not dented the economies in the way that SARS did last year, economists and government officials say.
But they cautioned that Asia's buoyant economic outlook, with expected growth in some countries of more than 6 percent, could change quickly if bird flu mutated into a disease that could be transmitted from human to human.
"If the flu creates a major travel scare, as was the case with SARS, tourism and other economic losses could reach tens of billions of dollars," said Jean-Pierre Verbiest, assistant chief economist of the Asian Development Bank.
So far, countries have not issued travel warnings regarding bird flu, and there have been few major cancellations by tourist groups to the region, airlines said. Hotels and airlines were reporting none of the pain felt this time last year when SARS left many hotels empty and led to the large-scale cancellation of flights.
But chicken has been removed from many menus, especially in Thailand and Vietnam, where the epidemic has hit hardest. The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that properly cooked chicken is safe to eat, but consumer confidence in Asian chicken has plummeted.
On Thai Airways, flight attendants explain that chicken "wasn't safe," and offered fish instead. In Vietnam, where the eight KFC fast-food outlets were closed over the Lunar New Year holiday, there were plans to introduce an all-fish menu.
In many countries, the poorest citizens would be the most affected, economists said.
"A major crisis in the chicken industry, which would reduce the supply and push up prices, would disproportionately affect poorer consumers," Verbiest said.
In Indonesia and Vietnam, the governments have said they would compensate chicken farmers, but there were doubts whether the amounts would make up for the losses. Indonesia's Minister for Agriculture Bungaran Saragih said that 1.25 million people among the nation's 220 million population could lose their jobs.
The WHO has reported 16 deaths from bird flu in two countries, Vietnam and Thailand. Those who have died -- most of them children -- were in close contact with diseased chickens.
Thailand is the world's fourth-largest exporter of poultry, mainly to Japan and the EU but not to the US. Both Japan and the EU have banned the importation of Thai chicken.
With one of the most vibrant economies in the region, Thailand stands to suffer the greatest economic losses.
Thailand's US$1 billion poultry industry, which employs about 1 million workers in a country of 62 million, has virtually closed.
On Wednesday, a government spokesman said that 24.8 million chickens had been culled, according to wire reports.
But the overall impact on the Thai economy, which is strongly based in industrial goods like computer and auto parts, is expected to be limited, financial analysts and government officials said. Poultry accounts for only 2 percent of national output.
Thailand's central bank said last week that it expected the bird flu epidemic to cut GDP growth by 0.2 percent this year.
Analysts, however, offered more sober assessments than the government, saying that GDP would be reduced by 0.7 percent to 0.9 percent by the disease.
But in making this assessment, Supavud Saicheua, the head of research at Phatra Securities here, said that Thailand's economy would still fare well this year.
"Given that we expect GDP to grow 6.9 percent this year, our estimates of the impact of bird flu would not alter our overall positive view on the economy," Supavud said in an economic update paper distributed worldwide this week to Merrill Lynch clients.
Supavud and other analysts cautioned, however, that they were assuming that bird flu would not mutate into a disease that could be transmitted from human to human.
There was little doubt that the Thai poultry business would change in the wake of the disease, experts said.
Big agricultural businesses like Charoen Pokphand Foods, the Saha Farms Group and the Betagro Group, dominate the Thai export poultry business to Japan and the EU.
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