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HK battles bird flu
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MAINLAND poultry farms have been warned of a possible bird flu outbreak as Hong Kong yesterday continued to slaughter all of its 1.2 million live poultry and enforce a territory-wide cleaning of market stalls to halt the spread of an avian flu.
The Agricultural Ministry, the State Quality Inspection Bureau and the Ministry of Foreign Economic Co-operation and Trade on Saturday jointly ordered ports around the country to disinfect all vehicles and vessels from Hong Kong and Macao, and asked all poultry farms in the mainland to closely watch any sign of bird flu.
After bird flu was found in chickens in 10 Hong Kong markets last week, more than 1.2 million chickens, geese, ducks and pigeons in the territory are being slaughtered.
It is the biggest cull since 1.5 million chickens were slaughtered in 1997 after a bird-flu outbreak killed six people.
While the source of the virus had still not been identified yesterday, Hong Kong officials said the strain of H5N1 was “completely different from the one in 1997” and “will not transmit to humans, although it spreads fast among poultry”.
They said they were launching the cull in response to the “speedy spread of H5N1 virus” among the chickens and to prevent the virus from mutating into a form that can harm humans.
More than 90,000 birds were expected to be killed by the end of yesterday.
From today, officers will start on the more than 200 chickens, geese, duck and pigeon farms in Hong Kong and slaughter more than 106,000 birds.
Poultry stalls will be closed for three to four weeks after the slaughter operation for disinfection and cleaning, and imports of live birds will also be suspended.
In neighbouring Macao, the H5N1 virus has been detected in two samples taken from geese, Macao officials said on Saturday.
They said the virus was not harmful to humans. But the territory has nevertheless decided to slaughter its 40,000 poultry.(SD-Agencies)
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