Source: MEATINGPLACE, 3/16/15

Pork and beef prices could come under spillover pressure from import bans on U.S. poultry products in the wake of confirmed cases of avian influenza in Missouri, Minnesota, Arkansas and Kansas, according to Kansas State University agricultural economist Glynn Tonsor.

Whether poultry prices come under pressure and drag down beef and pork prices will depend on how long current import bans by numerous countries remain in effect and if more countries ban U.S. poultry products from additional states or the whole country, Tonsor said in a news release on the school’s website.

The result would be U.S. poultry products being diverted to other foreign customers, or more poultry consumed domestically, he said.

“In both cases, the diverted products going to alternative channels will occur at lower transaction prices. Otherwise they would have voluntarily been re-channeled already,” said Tonsor, a livestock market specialist.

More than 40 countries banned poultry imports from Minnesota after H5N2 avian influenza was confirmed earlier this month in a turkey flock there. The outbreak, which was the first finding in the Mississippi Flyway, killed 15,000 birds in about a week, Tonsor said.

Over the weekend, USDA and Kansas Department of Agriculture (KDA) reported that a backyard poultry flock of chickens and ducks in Leavenworth County tested positive for the H5N2 strain, the same highly pathogenic strain found in Missouri last week.

The Kansas Department of Agriculture had already issued an order prohibiting the transport of live poultry and poultry products including eggs into or out of a quarantine zone that spans parts of Crawford and Cherokee counties in the southeast corner of the state unless authorized by an official permit. The Kansas quarantine zone borders Jasper County, one of two Missouri counties where highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has been confirmed at two commercial turkey farms.

Louisiana has also established entry requirements for poultry and poultry products destined for its borders.

For more stories, go to www.meatingplace.com.