Live chicken sales to resume in Hong Kong after bird flu case

Jan 11, 2012, 8:59 GMT

Hong Kong - A ban on live chicken sales in Hong Kong was to be lifted on schedule three weeks after a dead chicken was found infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus, officials said Wednesday.

Sales of live chickens were suspended on December 21 after the virus was found in a chicken that had died in a wholesale market and in two dead wild birds in the territory in December.

But tests carried out across Hong Kong's chicken farms since the December case have not found any trace of the virus. The government has lowered its bird flu warning from serious to alert, Health Secretary York Chow said.

The ban on selling live chickens was due to expire Thursday as Hong Kong prepares for the Chinese New Year holiday when families traditionally eat chicken.

Another ban was imposed on all poultry imports from around the border city of Shenzhen after a man died from bird flu in the city on December 31. The two-week ban was applied from January 1.

Despite the death of the man in Shenzhen there was no evidence of any mass outbreak of bird flu in China, Chow said.

Hong Kong was the scene of the first modern outbreak of bird flu to infect humans when it killed six people in 1997. The disease has since killed another 337 people worldwide.

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