should have been short this instead of the ES ----------------------------------------------------------- Japan Chicken Futures Plunge on Thai Bird Flu Reports (Update1) Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Chicken futures in Japan plunged as much as 13 percent on concern consumers may shun the meat amid reports bird flu may have spread to Thailand, Japan's biggest overseas source of chicken, after killing five people in Vietnam. Domestic broiler chicken for delivery in February, the most- active chicken futures contract on the Fukuoka Futures Exchange, fell as much as 58 yen to 375 yen per kilogram. The decline took this year's drop for the February contract to 26 percent. Chicken futures started falling last week after Japan's government said on Jan. 12 that bird flu killed about 6,000 chickens at a farm in Yamaguchi Prefecture in the nation's first outbreak of the disease in 79 years. The announcement came after South Korea killed almost 2 million chicken and ducks to check the spread of the bird-flu virus strain. The bird-flu epidemic is ``massively frightening'' and ``must be taken very seriously'' because it could mutate and become a pandemic among humans, a Lancet medical journal said in an editorial to be published in the Jan. 24 issue. ``The quarantine measures used to control SARS are unlikely to control influenza,'' it said. The H5N1 virus, which causes bird flu, has killed five people in Vietnam and infected a child in Thailand. If bird flu spreads among humans, it is potentially more contagious and lethal than severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which sickened 8,098 people and killed 774 in 2002 and 2003, the editorial said. ``Experts agree that another influenza pandemic is inevitable and possibly imminent,'' the World Health Organization said in a Jan. 15 fact sheet on bird flu posted on its Web site. The 1918-1919 flu pandemic, the deadliest of the 20th century, killed about 50 million people. Japan Ban Yesterday, Japan's agriculture ministry said it'll ban imports of chicken from Thailand, the world's fourth-biggest exporter, as a precaution after a Thai senator said a child had caught the disease and that the government was covering up the outbreak. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters yesterday three people are being tested for bird flu and the results would be known in two days. He denied there had been a cover-up. Japan became Thailand's biggest overseas market last year, when bird flu was detected in imported Chinese duck, slashing poultry purchases from China. Thailand is the fourth-biggest exporter of poultry meat after the U.S., Brazil and the European Union, according to Foodmarketexchange.com. Slaughter In the past two months Thailand has slaughtered 6 million chickens, mostly in its northern provinces, to check the spread of poultry cholera, not bird flu. Fowl cholera is spread by bacteria and hasn't been known to pass to humans. The World Health Organization has said it's concerned that the H5N1 bird-flu virus may mutate or mix with human flu viruses and become contagious among people. Humans have no immunity to bird flu, which has the potential to kill many more than the 744 people who died of SARS, the United Nations agency has said. Bird flu was first known to have jumped to people in Hong Kong, where it killed six of 18 patients in 1997 and one of two infected last year. Last Updated: January 22, 2004 21:29 EST