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High risks during Lunar festival
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HONG KONG, Thurs. --- When the Chinese gather all over the world to celebrate the Lunar New Year at the end of this month, chicken will be standard fare on their dining tables. However, experts warn that the jump in demand and the way live chickens are packed densely in crates, moved across borders and slaughtered is a sure recipe for trouble and could mean more outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 bird flu in birds and humans. "We are afraid of the risks, with more imports, the risks of infected chickens coming in will be greater. And if that happens, the risks of human beings getting infected will go up," said Leo Poon, a microbiologist at the University of Hongkong. The Chinese have a penchant for cooking and consuming freshly slaughtered chickens, but that age-old |
habit requires them to shop at neighbourhood markets where buyers and sellers are exposed to poultry in often unsanitary conditions. Eating well-cooked chicken poses no danger but slaughtering and handling infected chickens does. While the bird flu virus remains relatively hard for people to catch and is spread almost exclusively through contact with birds, scientists fear it could mutate into a strain that could pass easily among people and set off a pandemic, killing millions. In East Asia, 76 people have died of bird flu since 2003. The virus spread recently to Turkey, killing two children and experts have warned that it might now invade neighboring countries. |
Yesterday, Shigeru Omi, the World Health Organization’s regional director for the Western Pacific, said the number of outbreaks would increase with the Lunar New Year festival and urged people to practice good hygiene. “It is very important for people to apply basic personal hygiene practices… they should never eat dying or sick poultry”, Omi said. Authorities here are considering whether to lift the daily import cap of 30,000 live chickens, which are sourced from registered farms in mainland China. --- Reuters
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