Officials swoop as flu fears grow

Source: Agencies/Shanghai Daily  |   2008-6-13  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

HEALTH officials converged on poultry farms and markets across Hong Kong yesterday as they struggled to find the source of the city's worst bird flu threat in years.

Government workers took samples from cages, walls and feeding bowls at 50 local chicken farms and 64 markets, but no new infections had been detected, said Sally Hong, spokeswoman for the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department.

The action came after a mass slaughtering of 2,900 chickens at 470 retail outlets on Wednesday after poultry in four street markets tested positive for the dangerous H5N1 avian flu virus. Officials also killed 2,700 poultry on Saturday in a market after routine testing showed five chickens were infected.

A 21-day ban on poultry from the mainland and local farms has been imposed since Saturday's discovery.

The virus has not been detected in the 1.5 million chickens in the local farms.

Meanwhile, the government met with poultry trade workers about banning the storage of chickens in markets overnight and other steps to prevent more outbreaks.

"The existing control is insufficient. We might have to impose more vigilant measures in order to control the environment before we allow the chickens back into markets," said York Chow, Hong Kong's health secretary.

Chow said that a centralized chicken-slaughtering system was the ultimate solution. The government had wanted to introduce a centralized system for years but poultry workers considered the plan a threat to their livelihoods. Poultry is now killed on the spot in retail stores for freshness.

Hong Kong used to import 20,000 chickens from the mainland and another 20,000 were supplied from local chicken farms each day, officials said.

Hong Kong's biggest bird flu outbreak was in 1997, when the H5N1 strain jumped to humans and killed six people. That prompted the government to slaughter the entire poultry population of about 1.5 million birds.

In 2001, the government also carried out a massive poultry slaughter, killing 306,000 birds in wholesale and retail markets.

At least 241 people have died of bird flu worldwide since 2003, according to the World Health Organization.