\u201cIt\u2019s not like it used to be,\u201d 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. \u201cIn just a few months our sales have dropped 70 percent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In October, authorities in Greece mistakenly confirmed the country\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
European Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said in an interview with CNN, \u201cThe presence of bird flu in southeastern Europe does not increase the risk of a pandemic.\u201d Nevertheless, the chance of a pandemic is what many people fear in Greece.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t cooked chicken since the news of bird flu came out,\u201d 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. \u201cI\u2019m just too scared because you never know. It\u2019s better to be safe than sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In the Athens suburb of Zografou, people wait a long time to be seated at the popular restaurant \u201cSpitikes Yevsis.\u201d The wait for carry out is sometimes longer. Yet not a single customer has ordered a chicken entr\u00e9e. \u201cWe may be forced to stop cooking our chicken dishes,\u201d said one employee. \u201cPeople seem hesitant to order, and in the end they just go for something else, like beef or pork.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back in his shop, Koutakos said that he hopes the fear of a bird flu pandemic will quell. \u201cPersonally, I don\u2019t believe there is any real danger,\u201d he said, as he looked over his poultry products nestled beneath the glass counter. His only choice is to wait and see what happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cIt\u2019s not like it used to be,\u201d 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. \u201cIn just a few months our sales have dropped 70 percent,\u201d he said. In October, authorities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.acg.edu\/web\/observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.acg.edu\/web\/observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.acg.edu\/web\/observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.acg.edu\/web\/observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.acg.edu\/web\/observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.acg.edu\/web\/observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"https:\/\/web.acg.edu\/web\/observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.acg.edu\/web\/observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.acg.edu\/web\/observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.acg.edu\/web\/observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}