Total Ban on HK Poultry Imports
HONG KONG - After three dead chicken tested positive to the deadly H5 virus in Hong Kong, 80,000 chickens were slaughtered and emergency restrictions put into place.The Argentine Beef Packers, S.A. says these include the total ban on all imports for 21 days, with the restriction of movement of local birds.
Secretary of Food and Health York Chow said, “We feel that Hong Kong is facing a new alert for bird flu.”
In 1997 Hong Kong suffered its biggest outbreak of bird flu, when the H5N1 strain also came into play, causing the death of 6 people, leading the government to slaughter 1.5 million birds.
Since 2003 there have been 245 recorded deaths, caused by the bird flu virus, according to figures from the World Health Organization.
There was a report in the November edition of the Lancet, the most prestigious medical journal in the world, that confirmed the relationship between BSE (mad cow disease) is only Suspected, however with bird flu and TB there is no doubt at all.
Further Reading
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