In Vietnam, a Gateway for Bird Flu

Vietnamese women make their way down a path along the border. More than 1,000 chickens are estimated to be smuggled from China into Lang Son province each. Bird flu was detected in trafficked chickens in April. (Photos By Richard Vogel -- Associated Press)

Do Van Duoc, director of animal health in Lang Son, explained that the huge difference in prices on opposite sides of the border makes for a flourishing business despite the ban on poultry imports from China. Prices fluctuate, but on average, chicken that sells for 30 cents per pound or less in China can fetch a dollar or more in Vietnam.

Duoc said the high cost of poultry in Vietnam also reflects the expense of importing vaccines and other medicine to combat bird flu. Chinese farmers are able to keep costs down because of the vast scale of their poultry industry and the inexpensive supply of feed and domestically produced vaccines, he said.

Moreover, Duoc alleged that Chinese farmers unload chickens from areas struck by bird flu at bargain prices. In some cases, he said, the farmers tell Chinese authorities they have culled their flocks to earn government compensation and then peddle the birds to smugglers.

"They try to get as much money as they can," he said. "They are selling sick chickens because of the outbreak."

China's Agriculture Ministry confirmed that poultry was being illegally transported from Guangxi into Vietnam. In response to written questions, ministry officials said that an investigation by Guangxi animal health investigators had discovered smuggling from three areas close to Lang Son province but that there were no reports of this poultry being infected with bird flu.

Chinese agriculture officials said government veterinarians were working with customs and border defense officers to stop the illicit trade. Chinese police have confiscated more than 23,000 chickens and 3,500 ducks this year, officials said.

The syndicates running the smuggling rings pay local villagers about 30 cents a bird to haul the contraband along mountain trails that in some cases snake for more than 10 miles, said Nguyen Thang Loi, director of market inspections in Lang Son. Some smugglers, especially women and children, can carry only a few birds, but fit men haul as many as 20 at a time. Over the course of a week, the earnings can far outstrip the salaries of animal health officers, inspectors and others charged with stemming the trade.

The traffickers are finding new ways to move even larger amounts. In recent weeks, Loi's inspectors captured a pair of makeshift wooden carts that were being used to transport up to a ton of chickens at a time along railroad tracks running through the mountains.

Once the smugglers descend the slopes, their haul is often moved by motorbike to local farms that serve as stopover points, Loi reported. From there, the chickens are loaded onto trucks for transport, in many cases to the markets of Hanoi and points farther south, Loi and animal health experts said.

An average of up to 1,500 birds are slipped over the mountains into Lang Son each day, Loi reported. Along the entire Vietnam-China border, the total could be thousands more, according to Vietnamese and international livestock experts.

Worldwide, the trade in illegal poultry and other birds is extensive, said Lubroth of the U.N. agriculture agency, though the specific scope is unknown.

This business includes large-scale commercial shipments of uninspected meat, often from China, to destinations as diverse as Europe, Africa and the United States. Last month, U.S. inspectors discovered 2,000 pounds of frozen chicken, duck and geese smuggled from China in a Detroit-area warehouse that supplies Chinese restaurants and Asian groceries in southeastern Michigan.

Last year, Taiwanese officials reported their first case of the deadly bird flu virus among more than 1,000 birds that were being smuggled by ship from China. A pair of eagles confiscated two years ago at Brussels International Airport from the hand luggage of a Thai passenger were found to be carrying the disease.

In Africa, commerce spread the virus from Egypt to Sudan and likely took it to other countries on the continent, Lubroth said.

In Lang Son, Loi said he has only 22 inspectors at the border to stem the smuggling of everything from batteries to automobiles. Though joint efforts with police and soldiers have resulted in repeated arrests, he acknowledged that the organizers remain at large. "The real smugglers are behind the scenes, and even the people hired to carry don't know the names or have any information about them," Loi said.

As long as high prices in Vietnam make the illicit chicken trade lucrative, it will continue, said Jeffrey Gilbert, an animal health specialist in the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's Vietnam office. "You can put helicopters up there, really mobilize the army and put all kinds of resources in, and it would still go on," he said. "It's like the Ho Chi Minh Trail."

Researcher Vivian Zhang in Beijing contributed to this report.