Analyses of the poultry value chain and its linkages and interactions with HPAI risk factors in Nigeria

Impacts of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) can cause reverberations throughout the poultry marketing chain. In Nigeria, peak HPAI outbreaks in February 2006 and February 2007 affected 3,057 farms and farmers; 1.3 million of the country’s 140 million birds were destroyed, and the Nigerian government paid US$5.4 million in compensation (FDL 2008). Still, policymakers may overlook some HPAI impacts, focusing upstream of the producer, whereas cumulative downstream (traders, slaughterhouses, retailers, casual employment, and support services) impacts often dwarf those at the farm level. More significantly, the failure to capture these diverse impacts may have important implications for disease evolution and control that may accentuate its impact.