Hong Kong Bans Backyard Poultry Farms in Bird Flu Fight
Date: 08-Feb-06
Country: CHINA
Hong Kong government health experts have said the virus is probably endemic to southern China, despite Guangdong, the huge and prosperous province next to Hong Kong, not reporting any bird flu cases.
Lawmakers passed emergency legislation on Tuesday to stop households from rearing poultry such as chickens, ducks and geese, in an effort to tighten controls, health secretary Carrie Yau told the city's legislative council.
Anyone breaking the ban, which comes into effect on Monday without compensation for poultry handed over, can be fined up to HK$100,000 ($12,900). Owners of racing pigeons will need a licence.
Authorities in the former British colony have put customs officers on alert this week after a chicken smuggled into Hong Kong from mainland China was found to have had the H5N1 virus.
It was one of five birds in Hong Kong to have died of H5N1 avian influenza in the past month. Officials confirmed the fifth case on Monday.
Parts of the territory are the most densely populated on earth, but villages and small farming plots pepper Hong Kong's New Territories region, which also has a marsh teeming with migratory birds.
Bird flu has infected 165 people, the majority in Asia, and killed 88 of them since 2003. Millions of chickens have been culled across the region in the past two years, as experts fear the virus, which mostly affects birds, could mutate to a form that can be easily transmitted between people.
In recent months, seven people have died of bird flu in China and three have survived.
The H5N1 virus made the first known jump into humans in Hong Kong in 1997, infecting 18 people and killing six of them before the outbreak ended with the mass culling of the territory's entire poultry flock. There have been no human cases in Hong Kong since the virus resurfaced in Asia in late 2003.
