A popular sandwich bar in Dublin has a large laminated poster in a prominent position next to the cash register assuring the long line of lunchtime customers waiting to be served that the chicken in its sandwiches is perfectly safe to eat. Although it seems like a statement of the obvious, it is a sign of our times.

Even before the spread of the H5N1 strain of bird-flu started topping the news agenda in recent years, consumers in Ireland were troubled by chicken.

Research carried out on behalf of Safefood, the all-island Food Safety Promotion Board, has shown that 40 per cent of consumers say that from a health perspective, chicken is the food that causes them most concern. Bird flu has increased those concerns in Ireland and across the EU. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says it expects an 11 per cent overall decline in European consumption of poultry this year.

Last month the Michelin-starred chef Derry Clarke briefly withdrew chicken from the menus at his Dublin restaurant saying that demand had declined in light of bird flu threats.

This is in spite of the fact, acknowledged by Clarke at the time, that bird flu does not pose a significant threat to humans in its present form.

While the number of calls about chicken to the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) helpline is up slightly, from 78 calls to the beginning of May last year to 97 in the same period this year, the rise isn't dramatic. According to FSAI chief executive Alan Reilly, chicken is perfectly safe as long as it is properly stored, prepared and cooked. In fact, he says, media scares about bird flu might even be good news for consumers as the hype drives down supermarket prices.

While fears about poultry might be irrational, they certainly are unfortunate. From a nutritional and cost perspective, chicken represents extremely good value - an excellent protein source, it is approximately half the price of beef on a comparable weight basis.

According to the Safefood report, Irish consumers regard country of origin as a key factor when buying chicken, with the majority saying they believe homegrown fowl is of a higher quality than imported meat. The bad news for those with that preference is that 70 per cent of the chicken meat used by the Irish catering industry is sourced from outside the EU.

The value of poultry imported into the Republic is close to €190 million, with Brazil and Thailand carving up the largest slice of that business between them. Not that you'd notice - fresh chicken meat imported into the State is almost always presented for sale as chicken pieces and much of it, having undergone substantial transformation, is relabelled with product source given as Ireland.

At present, food from outside the EU which is "substantially transformed" or processed in the EU can carry the label of the country of processing and not the country of origin.

This is described as "a major loophole" in labelling legislation by Fine Gael's agriculture and food spokesman, Denis Naughten. "This situation is allowing products from outside the EU, which may not be produced to the same high standards, to be pawned off as EU produce and is completely unacceptable," he says.

For its part, the Department of Agriculture and Food says that the Minister, Mary Coughlan, has recently introduced legislation via the Department of Health to significantly improve the labelling of beef to include country of origin, slaughter and processing at a catering level. She is keen to push this forward to include other meats including poultry.

Reilly says that while expecting manufacturers of processed foods to list the country of origin of all ingredients on the packaging would be "impractical", the poultry sector should more closely mirror the stringent rules which apply to the beef sector when it comes to labelling.

"The rules for labelling beef are far more strict and we would like to those same rules applying to the poultry sector," he says.

FOR SOME, A chicken's Irish roots is no guarantee it is produced to the "high standards" alluded to by Naughten. Meath-born, London-based chef Richard Corrigan has landed himself in hot water by describing the country's chickens as "appalling".

"You're ignorant of where it comes from, what it's after been eating, has it any life whatsoever and you know, everybody knows it hasn't been given any circulation as any animal walking around," he said.

His comments drew much criticism from the Irish poultry industry with the IFA accusing him of seeking publicity for his restaurant, "by pedalling ill-informed views about chicken production in this country".

Corrigan's criticisms seem almost benign when compared with the damning assessment of supermarket chickens in Felicity Lawrence's book Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on Your Plate. Published in 2004, Lawrence found that the average supermarket chicken in the UK contained nearly a pint of water, traces of antibiotics and had burns from standing in its own excrement.

Much of the chicken, Lawrence said, had been illicitly injected with pork and beef proteins and nearly half was contaminated with the food poisoning bacteria, campylobacter. This practice is not illegal but manufaturers now have to list any added proteins.

Safefood's review of the chicken food chain on the island of Ireland reveals a highly regulated industry which adheres to "rigorous" international standards. However, it accepts that campylobacter is a problem and has stressed the need both in the report and in an ongoing advertising campaign for consumers to ensure that chicken is cooked and handled properly.