July 15, 2015
HK bans poultry meat, egg imports from UK county
Hong Kongannounced Tuesday it is banning imports of poultry meat and products, including eggs, from Lancashire county in the UK due to a bird-flu outbreak that had hit an egg-laying poultry farm there.
The Centre for Food Safety (CFS), a line agency of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, said it was taking the action to protect the health of Hong Kong residents.
Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, imported about 18,000 tonnes of chilled and frozen poultry meat and some 7.2 million poultry eggs from the UK last year, according to a spokesman for the CFS.
The spokesman said the CFS had contacted the concerned UK authorities regarding the temporary ban and that the former British colony "will closely monitor information issued by the World Organisation for Animal Health [OIE] on avian influenza outbreaks in the country [UK]".
"Appropriate action will be taken in response to the development of the situation", the spokesman added.
It was earlier reported that up to 170,000 chickens were culled starting late last week in a family-owned poultry farm in Lancashire that was confirmed to have been infected by H7N7 bird flu.
The UK''s Food Standards Agency (FSA), however, has assured consumers that the bird flu did not pose a food-safety risk.
"The risk of getting bird flu through the food chain is very low. Some strains of avian influenza can pass to humans, but this is very rare. It usually requires close contact between the human and infected live birds", the FSA stated. --Rick Alberto