August 18, 2005

Hong Kong continues live pig imports from China

Hong Kong will continue to import live pigs from China's mainland provinces with reported streptococcus suis outbreaks, even as public calls for a ban escalated after the latest bacterial infection of a local butcher.

The country's Health, Welfare and Food Bureau (HWFB) said that there was no need for the ban, as mainland authorities checked the pigs stringently before exports.

However, Hong Kong will send food inspectors to China's Henan province, which has denied reports of an outbreak there. Earlier this week, HWFB decided to stop processing applications for frozen pork imports from Henan and Shenzhen provinces as it waits for more information on the disease outbreak.

Hong Kong's latest bacterial infection victim, a 44-year-old butcher, works in a popular supermarket chain Wellcome and is the fourth person in the country to get the bacterial infection in the past month.

In the meantime, two men suspected of being infected with the pig-borne disease have died in Suzhou, Chinese authorities said Aug 17. The two men showed symptoms of the disease earlier this month and died later, one of them from blood poisoning.