July 12, 2004

Hong Kong Chicken Dealers Demand More Mainland Imports

About 400 Hong Kong poultry farmers, transporters, and retailers marched to government headquarters Saturday complaining of lost revenue and demanding to be allowed to import more chickens from mainland China.

Hong Kong's government has been gradually lifting a ban on mainland poultry imports that it imposed earlier this year as a precaution against a bird flu outbreak there.

Tsui Ming-tuen, a chicken wholesaler, said the demonstrators urged officials to raise the daily quota of 30,000 chickens, which he said is costing the industry here millions of Hong Kong dollars a day. Hong Kong imported about 100,000 chickens daily before the ban, he said.

In 1997, avian influenza crossed over to humans and killed six people in Hong Kong.

Reports of a new bird flu outbreak in China this week prompted Hong Kong to ban poultry imports from the eastern province of Anhui.

Spokesman Frankie Choi of the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau said his department is constantly reviewing the chicken import quota.