A truck carrying 2,000 live chickens from the Chinese mainland arrived at the Man Kam To Animal Inspection Station on Tuesday morning.

This was the first day of pilot import scheme for mainland live chickens since the beginning of the year when bird flu happened inthe area.

Personnel of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD), wearing protection gowns and masks, were ready to collect blood and feces samples of the birds.

FEHD Senior veterinary officer Thomas Sit said a total of 6,000 live chickens divided into three batches were arriving in Hong Kong on Tuesday. In each of the 2,000 chickens, 18 blood and 30 feces samples would be collected for H5 virus test.

FEHD personnel carefully handled the chickens from the truck and carried out the sample collection procedure. They then marked and sealed the truck carrying the chickens which would be segregated at the Cheung Sha Wan Temporary Poultry Wholesale Market before releasing to the retail market, provided that the test results were satisfactory.

Sit said the first batch of chickens were from registered farms that had no outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in the past 180 days and chickens had been vaccinated against H5 virus.

Before leaving the farm, chickens were quarantined for 5 days and tested for avian flu, and checked by officials from the mainland.

Additional measures have also been carried out by FEHD during the initial phase of the pilot scheme by sending people to inspect those registered farms before they can export their chickens to Hong Kong.

Sit said the first batch of live chickens arriving in Hong Kong were of good health. It is expected that members of the public will be able to buy chickens from the retail market Wednesday morning.

Catering industry is happy with FEHD's arrangement of gradually resuming the import of live chickens from the mainland. Samuel Hui,manager of a Chinese restaurant, said that they had already designed new chicken dishes, which he believed would be marketable along with the resumption of chicken import.

(Xinhua News  Agency  April 21, 2004)