Eight years ago the European Union slapped a ban on Thailand's raw chicken meat exports after the local industry was hit by an outbreak of avian influenza in late 2003 that claimed the lives of seven people and 60 million culled birds.
Japan, Thailand's second-largest chicken meat importer after Europe, followed up with a similar ban on raw meat. During the height of the bird flu panic there were fears that the virus would mutate and become transmittable between humans, not just between chickens and humans, a possibility that still worries scientists.
As a result of the scare, Thailand's exports of raw chicken meat plummeted from 389,000 tons in 2003 to 26,000 tons in 2004. "At the time it was like getting hit on the head with a hammer," recalled Pisit Ohmpornnuwat, executive vice president of Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company Ltd or CP.
The CP group, Thailand's largest agro-industrial conglomerate, pioneered the chicken export industry three decades ago as part of its strategy to boost demand for its main money earner - animal feed meal. The group also launched Five Star Grilled Chicken stalls, the Chester's Grill fast food restaurant chain that specialises in chicken meals and became the local franchisee for KFC, all in a bid to boost domestic demand for chicken and therefore CP animal feed meal. Its latest market expansion strategy has been to move into value-added products, such as CP brand frozen meals.
CP's shift towards more value-added products, including cooked chicken meat for export, just happened to coincide with the bird flu outbreak and import bans. "CP at that time was already looking into cooked meat products, so the avian flu crisis came at the right time," Pisit said. "It took us some time to adjust but after a few months we were back to normal."
The EU never banned cooked chicken meat imports from Thailand, because, according to scientific evidence, poultry meat subject to heat treatment of at least 70 degrees Celsius is considered safe from avian flu. It took a while for Thailand's other poultry exporters - there are at least 18 - to make the switch from raw to cooked meat.
"During the first three years after the avian flu outbreak, CP could expand its market share, but after that a number of other companies invested in new plants and started to compete," said Kukrit Arepogorn, manager of the Thai Broiler Processing Exporters Association.
Saha Farm Company Ltd is now the kingdom's leading chicken meat exporter, although CP is the largest overall producer of chicken meat. In eight years the industry has successfully switched from raw chicken meat to cooked meat. In 2011, cooked chicken meat exports amounted to 435,000 tons, (200,000 tons of which was shipped to the EU) and 27,000 tons of raw meat.
Prospects for chicken exports brightened this year when the EU decided to lift its ban on Thailand's raw "salted" meat, providing the kingdom with a 92,000-ton quota at favourable tariff rates. The ban on raw chicken meat exports will be lifted on July 1, after Thailand fulfilled an EU requirement of staying free of avian flu for three years as of February 2009.
"The conclusion drawn from the last EU mission carried out in March 2011 was that overall Thailand's official control system gives sufficient guarantees that the concerned products fulfil the relevant import requirements of the European Union," said David Lipman, head of the delegation of the European Union to Thailand. Thailand's main rival in the chicken business is Brazil, which last year exported 329,000 tons of raw chicken meat and 140,000 tons of cooked chicken meat to the EU. Both countries have been granted quotas for special tariff treatment in the EU market as compensation for the high import tariffs on chicken meat imports aimed at protecting EU chicken farmers.
In its bid to stay free of avian flu, Thailand's commercial chicken farms have had to upgrade their hygiene standards to meet World Animal Health Organisation requirements. The Livestock Department has also imposed controls over the movement of birds between provinces, to avoid the spread of avian flu.
While Thailand has been free of avian flu for three years, another outbreak could occur any time. "If we find out that the Thai system cannot assure compliance with the EU requirements or there is a new avian flu outbreak in the territory in the future, the EU would again adopt relevant protection measures to prohibit imports of poultry and poultry products from Thailand in a quick manner," Lipman said.
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