Subsidies earmarked for poultry industry amid scare

SHANGHAI - The Shanghai municipal government will provide poultry farms with subsidies to help them through the deadly H7N9 virus scare.

The city ordered a halt of live poultry trading and imports, and required poultry culling, after the national avian flu reference laboratory, under the Ministry of Agriculture, said last week that the H7N9 virus was detected in chicken samples collected at a market in Shanghai.

More than 20,000 live poultry have been slaughtered in the city.

According to Shanghai's subsidy standard announced Wednesday, poultry farms can get 15 yuan ($2.4) for each bird they have kept in stock between April 1 and 30. Individual farmers can get 3 yuan for egg-laying hens.

The government is also purchasing chickens from farmers at a certain price to help poultry farmers offset losses, and pay back poultry merchants for slaughtering their stocks with no less than 50 percent of the products' market prices.

By Wednesday evening, the new bird flu strain has killed nine of the 33 people infected with H7N9 in the country.