The Alabama poultry business is waiting for the other shoe to fall...and hoping it will not.
State officials had already banned the sale or trade of chickens from backyard flocks because of the report of bird flu in north Alabama and in Tennessee, but it's the humongous industrialized poultry operations that are reacting to limits on exports of Alabama chickens announced on Friday.
The Reuters News Service broke the story:
"U.S. trading partners on Friday limited shipments of poultry from Alabama, a top producer of chickens for meat, over bird flu concerns as the state's wait for federal confirmation of two suspected cases stretched past a week."
How important is the story to Alabama's economy? Consider this
Alabama ranks third in broiler production behind Arkansas and Georgia. Alabama's layer flocks produced 2.1 billion eggs in 2004, resulting in cash receipts of $288 million. Alabama ranks 13th nationally in total egg production with more than 9.24 million layers in inventory on Dec. 1, 2004.
MORE Info HERE.
[Saturday Data is a regular feature of www.timlennox.com. The website will celebrate it's 10th anniversary later this year,]
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