From chicken farms to beach resorts and trading floors, Thailand braced itself yesterday for the economic fallout from its first outbreak of the deadly bird 'flu sweeping across Asia.
Shares sank on the Bangkok stock exchange, the world's best performer in 2003, and the baht currency buckled on news that two people have caught the avian flu virus.
Tens of thousands of jobs are at stake in an industry that generates €1.2 billion in exports as countries scrambled to ban imports of Thai poultry. More worrying is the threat to tourism, now facing a new crisis after finally seeing signs of a rebound from last year's SARS panic.
Chicken exports are worth 60 billion baht (€1.2 billion) to the Thai economy. Sixty per cent of chicken exports went to Japan, until it, too, announced a ban on Thursday, while the EU as the second-largest customer has now also banned the trade.