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The Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, said today (September 25) that the number of live chickens to be sold at retail level and the chance for humans contacting live chickens will be significantly reduced, following the closure of business of most of the live poultry traders after joining the Government's buyout scheme for the trade.
This will facilitate the Government to prevent and control avian influenza and reduce the public health risk posed by the disease.
The application period for the scheme ended yesterday (September 24). The Government had received 29 applications from farmers (including 27 chicken and two pigeon farmers, representing about 56 per cent of the total number of farmers), 50 applications from wholesalers (representing about 70 per cent of the total number of wholesalers), 333 applications from retailers (representing about 72 per cent of the total number of retailers) and 199 applications from transporters (representing about 80 per cent of the total number of transporters).
Of the 333 applications from the retail sector, 74 of them were already eligible for selling chilled and frozen poultry while 111 had applied for such licence.
As at yesterday, the Government had received a total of 835 applications for one-off grant from affected local live poultry workers.
Since the local workers affected by the closure of business of farmers, wholesalers and transporters are requested to submit their applications 21 days after the latter's surrender of licences or tenancies, it is expected that there will be more such applications from workers.
So far, the sum of ex-gratia payments for the applications from the above sectors of the live poultry trade amounted to about $660 million.
"From now on only 131 retailers will remain in the business. In view of the recent overnight stocking of several thousand live chickens on average in wholesale market and the rising trend in the market share of chilled and frozen chickens, it is expected that the retail capacity will be reduced to about 10,000 chickens a day.
"After discussion with the relevant Mainland authorities, it is agreed that the number of live chickens to be imported from the Mainland will be reduced to 5,000 daily starting from today. The supply of live chickens will be equally shared between the Mainland and local farms," Dr Chow said.
Dr Chow, however, said that the Government had repeatedly mentioned that segregation of humans from poultry was the most effective measure to protect people from the threat of avian influenza.
The Government had also stated that it would review the scale and operational mode of the centralised slaughtering facility in the light of the latest situation in the live poultry trade.
"The poultry slaughtering and processing plant was originally planned to commence operation in 2011/12. We hope to advance the commencement date of the centralised slaughtering facility under planning as it will be smaller than the poultry slaughtering and processing plant planned previously.
"We will make a decision on the scale and operational mode of the facility shortly with a view to expediting the implementation of the policy of segregation of humans from poultry.Ħħ
"The Government will continue to impose the ban on overnight stocking of live chickens at retail markets before the implementation of central slaughtering," Dr Chow said.
The Food and Health Bureau obtained funding approval from the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council in July to implement the buyout scheme for the live poultry trade under which farmers, wholesalers, retailers and transporters and their local workers can apply for the scheme to leave the live poultry trade.
Ends/Thursday, September 25, 2008
Issued at HKT 21:31
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