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The Permanent Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Mrs Carrie Yau, met with the State General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) in Beijing yesterday (April 5) to discuss the details of the various requirements for import control and the necessary preparatory work to prepare the Hong Kong community for the resumption of importation of live poultry from the Mainland.
The Director of Food and Environmental Hygiene, Mr Gregory Leung, Deputy Director of Food and Environmental Hygiene (Food and Public Health), Dr Mak Sin-ping, and Assistant Director of Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation (Inspection and Quarantine), Mr Lai Ching-wai also joined the meeting.
At the meeting, the AQSIQ reaffirmed that all the Mainland registered farms supplying live poultry to Hong Kong had remained avian influenza free despite the outbreak of the disease in the Mainland.
A spokesman for the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau said today (April 6) that officers of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department had recently visited several Mainland registered farms supplying live poultry to Hong Kong, and noted that the registered farms had adopted the necessary precautionary measures to prevent the occurrence of avian influenza and instituted appropriate surveillance programmes to detect the presence of the H5N1 virus.
"Given the outbreak situation in the Mainland is now under control and surveillance has been stepped up, there is scope for us to consider resuming the importation of live poultry. If the situation remains stable, the authorities in the Mainland and the HKSAR Government will continue to explore a mutually acceptable date for live poultry to be imported by stages on a pilot basis," the spokesman said.
"For the importation of day-old chickens from the Mainland, it is expected to resume at about the same time when the importation of Mainland live poultry is resumed subject to availability," the spokesman added.
The Administration would work out the detailed arrangements with the relevant Mainland authorities and make a formal announcement as soon as possible.
Ends/Tuesday, April 6, 2004
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