KFC says it's bird flu-free

MANILA - KFC Philippines said Wednesday its products were unaffected by the bird flu outbreak in Pampanga province.

Rival restaurant operators Jollibee, McDonald's, Max's Group and poultry producers San Miguel Purefoods and Bounty Agro Ventures have made similar assurances to consumers.


"KFC Philippines would like to assure our loyal patrons that our famous line of fried chicken products are neither affected nor threatened by present concerns over avian flu," the company said in a statement.

All tests on KFC Philippines' chicken have turned out negative for the virus, it said.

The government has moved to contain the spread of the virus from the farming town of San Luis, north of the capital, where some 200,000 chickens were slaughtered.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Poultry-related stocks fall as investors react to bird flu outbreak

Listed poultry farms and chicken restaurants took a hit Monday as investors reacted to the Philippines' first ever bird flu outbreak in Pampanga. - Business Nightly, ANC, August 14, 2017

source: news.abs-cbn.com

McDonald's to use only cage-free eggs by 2025

McDonald's Corp's 16,000 U.S. and Canadian restaurants will serve only eggs laid by cage-free chickens within 10 years, the company said on Wednesday.

McDonald's USA has been buying more than 13 million cage-free eggs annually since 2011. The long-awaited switch is happening as North American egg suppliers are slowly starting to rebuild flocks after the worst bird flu outbreak in U.S. history.

The move comes as McDonald's, the world's biggest restaurant chain, is preparing to serve breakfast all day at U.S. outlets in October. McDonald's USA, which is fighting sagging sales, made waves in March by announcing a two-year plan to phase out meat from chickens raised with antibiotics used to fight human infections.

McDonald's buys about 2 billion eggs annually for its U.S. restaurants and 120 million for Canada to serve breakfast items such as Egg McMuffin and Egg White Delight.

Fast-food rival Burger King already has committed to using only cage-free eggs by 2017. Other large companies such as Starbucks Corp, General Mills Inc, Nestle, Sodexo Inc and Aramark also are in the process of switching.

Groups such as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Mercy for Animals and World Animal Protection have successfully lobbied many companies to adopt animal welfare practices. Such groups also have won commitments from nearly 100 major companies to phase out so-called gestation crates, which are small cages for breeding sows.

Celebrities such as film star Ryan Gosling have teamed up with HSUS to pressure Costco Wholesale Corp to eliminate cage-confined chickens from the company's egg supply chain. HSUS said Costco has committed to going cage free, but has not set a timeline for its full transition. HSUS said Costco rival Wal-Mart Stores Inc also has not set a timeline.

U.S. companies, led by burrito seller Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc and other popular brands, increasingly are sourcing their ingredients from suppliers who vow to use humane and environmentally sustainable agricultural practices.

California voters in 2008 passed a law mandating that all eggs sold in the state come from chickens given more spacious living quarters. That law went into effect on Jan. 1 and other states and countries since have followed Calfornia's lead.

So far this year, the price of a dozen eggs has averaged 67 cents more in California than in the Midwest, said Brian Moscogiuri, market reporter for shell eggs and egg products at Urner Barry.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

WHO team probes bird flu in Shanghai

SHANGHAI - A World Health Organisation team was due Monday to wrap up a trip to Shanghai, centre of China's bird flu outbreak which has killed 20 people, as part of an investigation into how the virus is spreading.

Since announcing on March 31 that H7N9 had been found in humans for the first time, China had confirmed a total of 102 cases in Shanghai and the capital Beijing as well as four provinces, the health ministry said Sunday.

"There has been no discovery of evidence of human-to-human transmission," the ministry said in a statement.

Experts fear the prospect of such a virus mutating into a form easily transmissible between humans, which would then have the potential to trigger a pandemic.

Chinese health officials have acknowledged so-called "family clusters", or members of a single family becoming infected, though they have so far declined to call this human-to-human transmission.

Chinese health officials and WHO representatives were to hold a news conference on Monday after the three-day visit by the UN health agency, the Shanghai government said.

The WHO representative in China, Michael O'Leary, said Friday that the purpose of the 15-member team's week-long visit to China was to study whether H7N9 was spreading among humans.

"The primary focus of the investigation is to determine whether this is in fact spreading at a lower level among humans. But there is no evidence for that so far except in these very rare instances," O'Leary said.

Health experts draw a difference between "sustained" human-to-human transmission and cases in which family members or medical personnel caring for the ill become infected.

The son of a man who was Shanghai's first case of H7N9 was confirmed to have the virus after an initial test ruled it out, Chinese officials said last week.

The Shanghai government also said the husband of a woman confirmed with the virus had become sick with H7N9, but added there was not enough evidence to verify transmission between them.

"Family clusters in general do not change our understanding of the characteristics of the disease," said Feng Zijian, an official of China's disease control centre.

"It is still passed from poultry to people and there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission," he said last Wednesday.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com