Right now, I think the industry's concern with public perception of the problem is a much bigger issue than a substantive concern about an outbreak here. |
Any flock ... with avian influenza will be destroyed on the farm. |
But we're not waiting for signs to show up. |
Even if we did have an outbreak, which is unlikely, it's going to be very limited. And the number of birds involved will be very small. |
Exactly how that works, what the practical impact on immediate trade will be, we're still trying to find out. We certainly want it resolved as soon as possible. |
First of all, we don't have it in the U.S. and we're doing everything to keep it out, ... If we have an outbreak, we could contain it. If we had to kill 5 million birds to eradicate it, that's still a very small number of our total annual production. |
I'm not defending it, and we are concerned about consumer perceptions, but the fact of the matter is, cooking destroys any virus, so canned food, as long as the canning is done properly, doesn't present any food safety problem. |
It only comes from actually handling a live, infected chicken. We don't have any of those in the U.S.A. and only a small number of people in Asia have contacted it. The danger, right now, is essentially zero in the United States and it's even pretty slim in Asia. |
So far, we've not seen any impact, but we're reviewing our options to see what we need to do to keep it that way. |
The health of the flock, ... is probably the best that it's ever been. |
The timing is a mystery to us. We did not seek this rule. We're not objecting to it, but we didn't support it, either. |
The trend is going in the wrong direction. The industry is concerned about this as well. These are our plants, this is our problem, and this is our challenge. |
There's nothing more that consumers should be doing that they aren't doing already. |
This is certainly the biggest issue facing the industry today, no question about that. |
This is the first program to cover the commercial industry as comprehensively as we are doing. We are gratified that 90 percent of the producers have signed up for the program, and more will come in as we go along. |