Press Releases
SFH on avian influenza
Following is a transcript of remarks (English portion) made by the Secretary
for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a media stand-up session in the
Legislative Council Complex today (December 21):
Reporter: (On avian influenza.)
Secretary for Food and Health: First of all, the Agriculture, Fisheries and
Conservation Department will be culling all the 17,000 chickens in the
Cheung Sha Wan Temporary Wholesale Poultry Market. They should finish the
work today, because we do not like to see any more chickens remaining in the
market overnight. In addition, they have also inspected 29 out of 30 chicken
farms in Hong Kong. They would also go through the last one today to ensure
that there is nothing abnormal in the chickens in those farms. And so far,
they have not found anything abnormal in these 29 farms. They have also
taken blood and swab samples from the chickens to ensure that we have a
thorough test for the virus and also the antibodies in those chickens.
At the same time, the Hospital Authority has also raised their alert to
receive patients who might have symptoms of severe influenza and also
history of contact with live chickens. So these are the measures we are
taking. We will also be following up the virus details in terms of the
genetic make-up and also the DNA sequencing of the virus of the affected
chicken. The samples we have collected (from dead birds) in the beginning of
this year belong to the 2.3.2 clan. So I think we will have to know whether
the recent two dead bird samples together with this dead chicken sample are
also the same type. And with that we will be able to ascertain whether the
vaccines we are now using for our chickens are still effective.
Reporter: (On compensation.)
Secretary for Food and Health: We will compensate the trade $30 per chicken
for those that needed to be culled.
Reporter: (On the origin of infection.)
Secretary for Food and Health: As far as the origin of the infection, we do
not actually have very certain information yet, because the chicken was
discovered in a bin that is for collecting dead chicken. It can come from
the Mainland or local farms. So we will be investigating the virus genetic
make-up to see whether we have some indications there. Regarding the actions
that have been taken, I think we have been doing the things we need to do
according to the contingency plan of avian flu. We are basically following
all the same procedures we used to be doing. So there is no cause for alarm
that we are not in control. We are really in control.
Reporter: (About the alert level.)
Secretary for Food and Health: We have put the alert level to "Serious". It
means the condition is more serious than the baseline. So definitely I think
with a chicken being infected, humans who are in contact with live chickens
will have a higher risk of getting infected. But once we have got rid of the
risk now at the wholesale market, and if all the farms being investigated
are finally certified to be clean from any infection, I think the risk will
remain the same as before.
Reporter: (On labelling chickens.)
Secretary for Food and Health: I think our consideration now is whether we
should introduce some sort of label, like the rings around chicken feet, to
let us know actually where chicken comes from, which farm and so on. But
that would also incur additional cost. So we need to talk with the trade.
Reporter: Is $30 negotiable?
Secretary for Food and Health: No, it is according to the law.
(Please also refer to the
Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Issued at HKT 20:39
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