US soybean export season has gotten off to a slow start and bird flu worries could further dampen demand, grain dealers and analysts said on Tuesday.
The slow pace in sales comes at a time when American farmers are harvesting what the US Agriculture Department has forecast to be their second-largest soy crop on record.
US soybean export sales are running 12 percent behind the five-year average, said Joe Victor, an analyst at Allendale Inc, an Illinois-based commodities company.
China, the world's top soybean importer, has purchased 2.71 million tonnes of US soybeans so far in the season that began September 1, compared with 4.04 million in the year-ago period.
"It's not necessarily that we've put all our eggs in one basket, but we may have put in a few too many," Victor said, referring to China accounting for some 40 percent of total soybean exports from the United States.
China, which has bought large amounts of South American soybeans, is grappling with the H5N1 avian flu, a poultry virus that can be fatal to both birds and humans.
Although there is no evidence that properly cooked chickens or eggs can cause infection, consumption of chicken has plummeted in several countries that found infected birds.
"The bird flu in their country has reduced domestic feed consumption to some degree, and we're seeing the Chinese pare back in terms of their overall import program," said Dan Basse, president of research firm AgResource Co.
On Tuesday, China reported another outbreak of bird flu, but said the situation was under control with no reported human infections. About 550 farm geese died and 45,000 birds in a two-mile radius were culled, burnt and buried, said China's Ministry of Agriculture.