“It’s not like it used to be,” said Panayiotis Koutakos, owner of the Koutakos Brothers Butcher shop. His sales have plummeted as fewer and fewer customers order chicken and other poultry products from his small business in central Athens. “In just a few months our sales have dropped 70 percent,” he said.

In October, authorities in Greece mistakenly confirmed the country’s first case of bird flu on a turkey farm on the Aegean island of Oinouses. In Romania and Turkey, however, cases of bird flu were confirmed by the European Union.

European Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said in an interview with CNN, “The presence of bird flu in southeastern Europe does not increase the risk of a pandemic.” Nevertheless, the chance of a pandemic is what many people fear in Greece.

“I haven’t cooked chicken since the news of bird flu came out,” said Yiannoula Makri, a 52-year-old housewife who lives in the Athens suburb of Nea Ionia. She said she will not eat or serve anything that has eggs in it. “I’m just too scared because you never know. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Scientists announced on BBC News that the H5N1 virus could cause a human flu pandemic if it mutates into a form that spreads communicably. As a result, the European Union imposed a ban on poultry imports from Romania and Turkey.

In the Athens suburb of Zografou, people wait a long time to be seated at the popular restaurant “Spitikes Yevsis.” The wait for carry out is sometimes longer. Yet not a single customer has ordered a chicken entrée. “We may be forced to stop cooking our chicken dishes,” said one employee. “People seem hesitant to order, and in the end they just go for something else, like beef or pork.”

Back in his shop, Koutakos said that he hopes the fear of a bird flu pandemic will quell. “Personally, I don’t believe there is any real danger,” he said, as he looked over his poultry products nestled beneath the glass counter. His only choice is to wait and see what happens.