The costs and benefits of the flu scare.

last updated 8 January 2015

Hungary

Editorial

Before we all don surgical masks to ward off bird flu, said Budapest’s Nepszabadsag in an editorial, let’s ask ourselves who benefits from the hysteria. Isn’t it interesting that the “worldwide culling” of all those chickens and ducks is occurring just as the price of poultry “reaches a 10-year low”? Mind you, nobody is insinuating that the health threat isn’t real, or that, say, the beef industry is behind it. We just want to remind people to keep an eye on the bottom line. Hungary is, perhaps, more attuned than most countries to the harsh repercussions that health scares can have on agriculture. “For some strange reason the Italians always seem to detect an epidemic-threatening disease in Hungary’s sheep flocks just before the Easter lamb exports.” We may all be in the European Union together, but national industries still compete with one another. And “rumor” can be a wickedly effective weapon of trade.