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Following is a transcript of the remarks by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow, at a stand-up media session after the official opening of the Centre for Food Safety cum International Symposium on Food Safety today (January 12):
Dr Chow: Today is a very important day for the Centre for Food Safety, particularly this is the official opening of the Centre for Food Safety. In the past year, we have been putting a lot of work into the development of the food safety regulatory scheme. Today we also invited quite a number of experts from all over the world to talk about the issue of food safety and how they handle food safety internationally and also in different local governments. It will give us a lot of insight into the challenges we face. Hong Kong is a particular place in that we have 95% of our food imports coming from various countries. We need to comply with the international regulatory standards as well as the individual exporters' and countries' standards. This is a great challenge for us. As the Chief Executive has mentioned yesterday at the Legislative Council, our direction is to register all the importers of food so that eventually we will be able to trace the source of the food and the distribution of the food in local retailers. This would also ensure that certain food items that claim to meet safety standards and have health certificates would be able to be monitored. This will be the future direction for Hong Kong.
Reporter: (on avian influenza)
Dr Chow: We believe that now and every winter in the Northern Hemisphere, there will be increased risks of avian flu transmission to humans. The most important aspect is to ensure that it is not going to be developing into a pandemic or a new virus. The important issue is to identify the cases, to isolate them, to trace the source of infection of these people and the poultry infection so that it will not spread further. I don't think we can deny that in our natural environment, the virus would be among some of the wild and migratory birds, particularly, in water birds. This is the real risk that the whole world is facing. As long as we can be vigilant in our surveillance and identification of suspected cases, we will be able to control this to a limited extent.
Reporter: (on avian influenza)
Dr Chow: As far as poultry is concerned, the main risk is live poultry. There is a little evidence that chilled or frozen poultry can transmit the virus into an avian flu infection in humans. That is the reason why we have been very vigilant and cautious in our handling of live poultry, both for local farms as well as those imported from the Mainland. All our poultry are now vaccinated. We also check the antibody level of the chickens that cross the border and from local farms every day. With that, we will be able to control any suspected avian flu outbreak in Hong Kong.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)
Ends/Friday, January 12, 2007
Issued at HKT 16:43
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