Bird Flu Hits Vietnam Right Where It Hurts

Since last year, pho ga has virtually disappeared in this soup-obsessed city, which has more noodle shops than Seattle has espresso bars.

Pho 2000 -- perhaps the nation's most famous soup cafe owing to a visit by former U.S. President Clinton five years ago -- has literally crossed the dish off its menu. Once commonplace eateries that specialize in chicken soup have closed by the dozen.

"No one will buy chicken," said the manager of Pho 24, a trendy downtown soup restaurant. "Try some beef."

After 18 months of bird flu outbreaks, the economic effect of the epidemic can be seen just about everywhere in Vietnam, from empty soup bowls in the cities to the closure of poultry farms in the hinterlands of the Mekong Delta.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that Southeast Asia as a whole has suffered about $10 billion in economic losses because of bird flu. Major poultry exporters hit by the outbreaks, particularly Thailand, have suffered the greatest financial losses.

But in Vietnam, poultry is not just an industry, it is a way of life.

About 90% of the nation's more than 200 million farm birds live in the backyards of subsistence rice growers, laborers and even urban professionals, according to an analysis by the Vietnamese agricultural ministry. Before the flu outbreaks, the vast majority of Vietnamese households, including nearly 70% of the poorest people, sold poultry to supplement their income, according to a World Bank study. Many more sold eggs.

Now, the bird flu epidemic has forced the government to remove chickens and ducks from large swaths of land.

Live poultry has been banned in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, imports have been curtailed and more than 40 million birds have died or been culled by government order.

"I'm very fed up with raising chickens," said Nguyen Thi Suong, a Mekong Delta farmer.

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In an epidemic spread by migrating birds, there is no one place that can be identified as its epicenter. The virus has winged its way across Southeast Asia.

The hamlet of Hoi Xuan, about 35 miles southwest of Ho Chi Minh City down bumpy Highway 1, is as good a place to start as any. It is at the heart of Long An province, in the nation's rice bowl. Of the 40 million birds that have died in Vietnam because of bird flu, nearly 8 million have been from this province. About 85% of its flocks were destroyed last year by the disease known here as cum ga, or chicken flu.