(Recasts, adds fresh Asda comment para 3, Sainsbury's comment in paras 6-8) ) By Michael Szabo LONDON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Leading UK supermarket chains say the recent bird flu outbreak in Britain has had little impact on poultry counter sales so far -- a view echoed in other parts of Europe. UK supermarkets Asda <WMT.N>, Waitrose [JLP.UL] and Morrisons <MRW.L> all reported no fall in poultry meat sales this week after the discovery last weekend of the deadly H5N1 virus on a turkey farm in eastern England. "We haven't seen any impact. In fact, since last weekend, we're still selling more (poultry) now than we were (this time) last year," a spokeswoman for Asda told Reuters on Friday. Tesco <TSCO.L> reported a small drop in poultry meat sales this week."We haven't seen an effect on eggs, just a slight dip in poultry meat sales ... we continue to monitor sales and customer buying habits," a Tesco spokeswoman said. Sainsbury's <SBRY.L> reported a drop of approximately 10 percent in poultry sales figures as a whole for the past five days compared to the same period last week. It had previously said there had been no significant change. "The situation is, however, evolving all the time and the recent bad weather has also been a factor in the drop in sales," Sainsbury's said in a statement on Friday. Consumers in Europe's top poultry-producing country, France, reacted far more to a bird flu outbreak early last year, when sales plunged by more than 30 percent immediately afterwards and did not recover until mid-year. Supermarkets in the Netherlands, the number one importer of British poultry meat in 2006, reported no impact on sales so far. In Germany, it was still too early to say whether the British bird flu case had had any impact on poultry sales, though none was expected, a spokesman for the German Poultry Industry Association said on Thursday. Sales in Hungary have also held up despite the H5N1 virus being found among geese at a farm in southeastern Hungary last month. "It is insignificant....it has had no market impact," Hungarian Poultry Product Council director Laszlo Takacs said this week. NEW DEVELOPMENTS British officials said on Thursday they believed Hungary was probably the source of the infection in British turkeys, after initially saying the two outbreaks were unrelated. Bernard Matthews, which owns the British farm where 160,000 birds were culled earlier this week and is Europe's biggest turkey producer, has suspended imports of about 38 tonnes per week of partially processed turkey meat from Hungary. Britain's Food Standards Agency said on Friday it was investigating whether contaminated meat had reached the shops, but said it would not be a health risk to consumers. "If it was found that this meat had got into the food chain, it would be illegal and we would take appropriate action," an FSA spokeswoman said. (Additional reporting by Andras Gergely in Budapest, Anna Mudeva in Amsterdam and Michael Hogan in Hamburg)
