A French mayor banning chicken from school canteens, Germans abandoning cats by the hundreds, Greeks and Italians virtually axing poultry from their diets are all signs that a worried Europe is inching toward what some have called a bird flu psychosis. In Austria, a provincial hospital in Burgenland has even reserved 20 percent of its beds for possible bird flu patients, even though no human infections have been reported anywhere in Europe.
Indeed, despite assurances from officials that health risks are negligible, an edgy public is taking its own, not always rational, precautions against the deadly virus.
Their first line of defense has been to stop eating poultry, even if experts have said that cooked fowl poses no threat.
In countries where there have been avian outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 strain, poultry sales have been hit especially hard.
In Greece, consumption has plummeted by 75 percent in three weeks, according to the country's largest poultry farmers' association. "If sales continue falling at this rate, poultry farms may have to close," association head Spyros Nonikas told AFP on Friday.
Fearing a public panic, Nonikas has urged the Greek broadcasting regulator to ensure that TV channels are "more moderate about what they say on this issue."
In Italy, where poultry meat sales have dropped off by 70 percent since an H5N1 outbreak among wild, migratory birds, many butchers have simply stopped selling chicken and duck altogether.
A special hotline set up by the ministry of health is fielding an average of 3000 calls a day, many asking about the risks posed by pets following the confirmation Thursday that a cat in Germany was killed by the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain, the first European known case in a mammal.
In Germany itself, hundreds of cat owners have abandoned their pets, and some have sought to have them put down, the German animal welfare society said.
"Nationwide, several hundred cats have been left with us. People are scared their cats have bird flu," a spokesman for the group told AFP.
In France, mayor Joel Boutier of Groslay, a small town north of Paris, banned chicken from school dinners "following numerous appeals from worried parents," he said.
The ban provoked angry reactions from poultry producers.
Martin Malvy, president of the Midi-Pyrenees region which includes a major chicken farming area in the Gers department, wrote to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin asking him to condemn the measure as "inopportune and unjustified."
The gathering panic across Europe threatens to have a ruinous impact on the continent's multi-billion dollar poultry industry, as well as ancillary sectors such as feed suppliers.
Europe's largest poultry producer, the Brittany-based Doux group, announced Thursday that it would temporarily cut 500 to 600 jobs -- 10 to 15 percent of the company's workforce in France -- until at least June 30.
A drop in sales of 25 to 30 percent just in the last week has come on top of an earlier fall of 15 to 20 percent since October 2005, a company spokesman said.
In Bosnia, sales have dropped off 90 percent, a spokesman for an association grouping 300 poultry farmers said Friday.
The German federation of poultry farmers estimated Friday that bird flu had already cost its members 134 million euros (160 million dollars) since last fall.
Politicians, health officials and even a Catholic bishop have all tried to calm public fears.
In Greece's northern region of Thessaloniki, where a bird flu outbreak has axed poultry consumption by 80 percent, local authorities and schools have launched information campaigns, and poultry producers offered 1,500 grilled chickens on Wednesday to passers-by in the port city of Salonika.
In France, the bishop of Aire et Dax in the southwest -- the country's largest poultry and foie gras-producing region -- appealed to his flock to keep eating chicken.
"I ask Catholics in the Landes department to keep their heads, to maintain their traditional habits and to eat poultry as usual, notably during the season of Lent which has just begun," Philippe Breton said in a message to be read out in churches over the weekend.
Not all countries have given in to bird flu panic when it comes to eating chicken. Sales in England have held steady, the British Poultry Council said Friday, while consumption is only slightly below normal in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.
None of these countries, however, have thus far reported a case of H5N1 in either wild or domestic fowl.
In Scandinavia, despite confirmed or suspected outbreaks in Sweden and Norway, poultry consumption has not been affected. Swedish poultry sales in January were, in fact, eight percent higher as compared to the same month last year.
