Food Safety, Environmental Hygiene, Agriculture and Fisheries 179
Live poultry retailers are also required to observe a set of strict safety rules. They must ensure that people working at their outlets wear protective clothing and report any dead poultry to the FEHD immediately when a dead bird is found. They must not overstock live poultry in their premises and must affix acrylic panels to their poultry cages to prevent direct contact between customers and the poultry. They are also responsible for preventing customers from touching live poultry.
During the year, the Government suspended temporarily the importation of live poultry or poultry meat from a number of countries and cities, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, North Korea, Indonesia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Japan, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Cote d'Ivoire, Ribatejo Norte of Portugal, Washington County of Arkansas, and Canada, following reports of avian influenza outbreaks in those places. The suspension will be completely lifted if FEHD is satisfied with the control and management measures taken and the countries have regained their Notifiable Avian Influenza free status.
All live poultry entering Hong Kong have to be tested for avian influenza before being released to their importers.
Hong Kong observes stringent rules to keep bird flu at bay. The measures include close monitoring of farms and markets, vaccination of chickens and close surveillance of all birds brought into Hong Kong, or already in the city.
Bird blood samples and/or faecal swabs are collected regularly from poultry farms, wholesale and retail markets, regardless of whether the samples are from healthy, sick or dead birds. The same is done with birds kept in recreation parks, pet shops, and wild birds in wetlands and elsewhere. A quick, realtime method of testing samples for avian influenza, known by the acronym PCR, is used in Hong Kong. The Government provides a round-the-clock service for receiving birds brought in for examination, regardless of whether the birds are dead, or in a weak state.
In June, the H5N1 virus was detected in four markets in Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories. As a result, about 6 000 birds in retail outlets across Hong Kong were culled. The Government subsequently suspended live poultry imports from the Mainland and local poultry farms stopped delivering poultry to markets. The suspension was lifted on July 2.
Meanwhile, some poultry traders appealed to the Government to buy them out, complaining that it was very difficult not to keep live poultry overnight at retail outlets. In response, the Government drew up a buyout plan which ended in September and received 611 applications from farmers, wholesalers, transport operators and retailers. The largest number of applications were submitted by transport operators (199) and retailers (333).
Avian influenza was detected in a local chicken farm on December 9, requiring the AFCD to cull around 68 000 chickens and destroy about 26 000 fertilised eggs. As a precautionary measure, some 18 000 chickens in another farm located within a 3-kilometre radius of the infected farm were also culled. Furthermore, some 18 000