Chicken shortage as flu hits flocks

The price of chicken has doubled at some wholesale butchers after bird flu wiped out poultry flocks in Europe.

Wholesalers are reporting chicken prices at a 30-year peak as demand outstrips supply.

The flu spread through flocks in Holland and Belgium, home to some of the biggest poultry producers in the world.

They supply the UK with 150,000 tonnes of meat a year - a third of all imported chicken. In the past three months, the wholesale-cost of chicken has soared after the industry turned to UK producers to fill the shortfall.

Steve Crosby, who owns SC on Charterhouse Street, one of the City's leading butchers, said: "We sell five-kilogram bags of chicken and three months ago they were going for about £12.50. Now they are selling for £25.

"It is dearer than I have ever seen it." There are fears that the rise may be passed on to supermarkets and restaurants. But a Tesco spokesman said the company would "absorb the increase as much as possible".

If the rise spreads, it raises the prospect of a kilo of free-range chicken increasing from around £4.95 to almost £10.

Keith Edwards, a salesman for H Smith Ltd, a wholesaler in Smithfield market, said he has not seen the price of chicken so high for 30 years. He said: "We only buy British chicken and we have a major problem getting adequate supplies." Consumers were probably paying a realistic price for chicken for the first time in a decade, he said.

"It has been so cheap because of imports. This is probably a more realistic price which represents the strict standards which UK farmers have to produce their meat to."

It is thought prices won't fall until Holland and Belgium have reared new birds, which could take up to three months.