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Kinmen authorities to test all poultry imports

Poultry industry workers yesterday demonstrate the sanitary slaughtering process for chickens. The government has stressed that domestic poultry products are safe and has called upon the public to purchase domestic poultry meat. PHOTO: CNA

The Kinmen County Government announced that all imports of live poultry, frozen poultry and related products would be screened for an 11-month period beginning yesterday as part of efforts to prevent spread of avian flu.

With infections of the virulent H5N1 avian-flu virus reported across 10 Asian countries, and with more than a dozen people already dead because of the disease, Kinmen, which relies heavily on imports for daily necessities, decided yesterday to step up food safety and animal quarantine checks, county government officials said.

Starting yesterday, all in-bound shipments of live poultry, frozen poultry or cold ready-to-serve meat products would be held and screened, county officials said.

They added that shipments would not be permitted without documents proving the products were from farms unaffected by disease for at least three months.

The controls will remain in place until Dec. 31, the officials said.

In related news, Kinmen police officers recovered 17 live chickens and ducks on a beach near Ku-ningtou in the northwest of the island that were believed to have been abandoned by smugglers while fleeing a coast guard patrol.

The captured chickens and ducks were handed over to Kinmen's Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine for examination.

Bureau authorities destroyed the animals after taking samples.

On Dec. 9 last year, six live red-faced ducks were caught by Kinmen authorities on a beach in Hsiyuan in the island's northeast during an anti-smuggling operation, bureau officials said.

The six ducks, believed to have come from China, were destroyed after the officials took samples for examination at a laboratory in Taiwan.

The laboratory staff confirmed later in the month that the H5N1 virus was present in one of the six ducks.

But, according to bureau officials, no cases of the virus have been discovered on any of Kinmen's 28 poultry farms.
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