Sales of live chickens imported from Chinese
mainland have resumed in Hong Kong three weeks after imports were banned
following another human bird flu death on the mainland, agriculture chiefs
announced.
The ban was imposed on March 6 after authorities confirmed the first human
bird flu fatality in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong which neighbours
Hong Kong.
Officials said 20,000 Chinese chickens, brought in over the weekend, had been
cleared for sale.
They denied that a handful of the chickens which had arrived dead were
suspected to have the deadly H5N1 virus, which has killed more than 100 people
worldwide since late 2003.
"When you transport a large number of chickens over long distances some of
them die of stress," a spokesman for the agriculture department said.
"Checks were carried out on two sides and everything is okay," he said.
Hong Kongers have traditionally bought chickens live and had them
slaughtered, usually at the market, just prior to cooking.
The practice has been criticised for bringing people in close contact with
poultry and has been blamed for aiding the spread of H5N1, which is believed to
pass to humans through bird faeces and viscera.
The government has controversially decided to ban the sale of live chickens
at such "wet markets" and open a central slaughtering centre to reduce public
contact with birds.
Hong Kong was the scene of the world's first reported major bird flu outbreak
among humans in 1997, when six people died. The government slaughtered all the
city's 1.5 million poultry to contain the outbreak.
The last human cases in the city were in 2003, when two people were infected
and one died. But 17 birds have tested positive for the disease in recent
weeks.