December 4, 2014

HK bans poultry imports from part of Canada

The Hong Kong government announced Thursday (December 4) it has banned poultry imports from British Columbia in Canada following bird flu outbreaks in the province.

Hong Kong's Centre for Food Safety (CFS), an agency under the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, said it had banned chicken and egg imports from British Columbia following confirmation by Canadian authorities of H5 avian flu outbreaks on two poultry farms at Fraser Valley, British Columbia.

The ban, the centre said, is for the protection of Hong Kong's public health.

A CFS spokesman said that Hong Kong imported more than 7 000 tonnes of frozen poultry meat and about 170,000 chicken eggs from Canada between January and October this year.

Two British Colombian poultry farms were placed under quarantine yesterday (December 3) following bird flu outbreaks in the area. Earlier a turkey farm in Abbotsford and a chicken farm in Chilliwack were placed under the same measure, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

News reports said all four infected farms were about 8 kilometres apart in Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver.

Some 11,000 turkeys were being raised in the Abbotsford farm, to be slaughtered for Christmas, and half of them died from bird flu, reports said.

The Chilliwack farm, on the other hand, housed 7,000 chickens and around 1,000 of them died.

In 2004, 42 poultry farms in Fraser Valley were also hit by bird flu outbreaks, necessitating the slaughter of 17 million chickens, turkeys and other domestic birds.