Hong Kong bans French poultry after bird flu find

BEIJING - Hong Kong barred poultry imports from France today over bird flu fears, while authorities in eastern China scrambled to contain an outbreak of the virus that has left two people critically ill.

The European Union had urged trading partners not to over-react to the spread of H5N1 bird flu to a turkey farm in France, after Japan banned French poultry imports on Saturday and threatened similar action against the Netherlands.

Hong Kong, where bird flu made its first known jump to humans in 1997, killing six people, is already unnerved by the threat of the disease spreading from China, which warned yesterday of the chance of a massive outbreak among birds.

China has reported more than 30 outbreaks of H5N1 among wild and farmed birds in the past year and culled more than 23 million fowl in 2005 to control its spread.

The virus, which spreads easily among birds but is still relatively rare in humans, has killed eight in China since it re-emerged in 2003. Hong Kong has enforced a ban on backyard fowl and warned people not to touch wild birds or live poultry.

Today China's official Xinhua news agency said Hong Kong had suspended imports of French poultry until further notice.

Hong Kong is a small poultry market for France, the EU's biggest producer, whose biggest exports are to Russia and the Middle East. France's poultry industry is worth 6 billion euros ($10.71 billion) a year.

Bird flu has killed at least 92 people worldwide since 2003, spreading from Asia to the Middle East and reaching Europe this year along wild bird migration patterns.

Xinhua said a woman farmer and a 9-year-old girl from two neighbouring Chinese provinces remained in a critical condition.

Authorities in Zhejiang province traced 600 people who had been in contact with the girl and tested them for signs of the disease, but found that none had been infected.

There have been no confirmed human cases in Europe, although many people have been tested for the virus. Today, a Romanian man from a village where H5N1 had been detected in poultry was undergoing tests for bird flu.

Avian flu has been registered in wild fowl in six regions of southern Russia and in domestic fowl in four of these regions, the country's agriculture ministry said today, without specifying the strain of the virus.

Further west, Switzerland reported its first case of H5 avian flu in a bird, saying results from tests on a wild duck found on the shores of Lake Geneva were expected by the week's end.

France confirmed 15 new cases of H5N1 among wild swans in the Ain department of the country, which has the turkey farm where the virus was confirmed yesterday. In Germany, the total number of H5N1 cases rose to 124 after five more wild birds tested positive. The French turkey farm case was the first outbreak among domestic farm birds in the European Union.

Europe's poultry producers had already been alarmed after Japan's ban and European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson urged yesterday any precautionary action be "proportionate".

"There can be a tendency to over-react and this can bring us much danger," he said.

The United Nations has recommended that no birds from diseased flocks enter the food chain, and that people not eat raw poultry parts, including eggs, from areas with outbreaks among poultry.

Under EU rules, poultry meat, eggs and products from zones set up around a bird flu infection site are blocked from the market, unless they meet stringent conditions such as those for heat-treated meat.

Fear of the disease has been putting many off poultry worldwide.

"Our sales were 40-50 per cent chicken, but now it's about 10 per cent. I think people are grossed out now by chicken with all that they hear," said one butcher in Damascus.

- REUTERS