The risk of highly-pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is expected to have a major import on U.S. poultry exports in the next few years, according to a report from Rabobank International.
For the U.S. chicken sector, most of the trade issues stem from the discovery and subsequent spread of HPAI in the autumn of 2014, which led to many poultry trade partners banning U.S. poultry products. Despite 2016 having just a single case of HPAI so far, Rabobank still sees the risk of future HPAI outbreaks as being a major concern for U.S. poultry exports.
For most countries, the U.S. ban is regionally based to where the problems have occurred, so this a positive, leaving much of the U.S. open to export poultry. The concern in this scenario is that, if a state should have an HPAI outbreak, the entire state could lose the vast majority of its export markets.
An example is Arkansas, the second-largest chicken-producing state in the U.S. which experienced an outbreak in 2015. According to Rabobank, after a state is found to have a case of HPAI, that state loses as much as 75 percent of its export potential as a result.
