Processed poultry: Strict checks ordered
By Zhao Huanxin (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-11-14 05:15

The nation's quality watchdog said yesterday that it would check processed poultry to ensure that none of birds come from regions affected by bird flu even as veterinary workers cull hundreds of thousands of fowls to curb the spread of the disease.

The inspections will cover 16 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.

It will also check the quality of disinfectants used for combating bird flu, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China said in a statement yesterday.

Customers shop for chicken at a super market in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province November 10, 2005. [newsphoto]

Regions where inspectors will fan out include areas that have been stricken by the fatal bird flu virus this year Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan and Liaoning and 10 others, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Hebei.

The efforts are to help protect the health and restore the confidence of consumers, whose appetite for poultry has waned, according to experts.

Quality supervisors will check the food production permits of poultry product makers and impose tough penalties on firms which do not have them.

In particular, inspectors will look for proof of the makers especially those in the vicinity of an outbreak site to ensure that the birds have been certified by quarantine authorities, and no dead or sick chicken, ducks or geese were used, it said. Violators will be dealt with severely.

The inspectors will also see to it that no fake or shoddy disinfectants, such as bleaching powder, caustic soda or peractic acid, enter the market.

Among other developments:

In Central China's Hunan Province, a nine-year-old boy, surnamed He, was discharged from the provincial paediatric hospital on Saturday after being admitted on October 18 for "bronchial pneumonia."

The WHO will send a team to Hunan in a couple of days and conduct an intensive investigation on cases including the boy and a 36-year-old middle school teacher, who fell ill after close contact with affected poultry, a spokesman said.

The boy's sister, 12-year-old He Yin, died on October 17 following acute pneumonia; and health authorities have not ruled out the possibility of human infection in the three cases.

The three are natives of bird flu-hit Wantang Village, Xiangtan County, and felt ill after eating affected fowl.

In the Chinese capital, the municipal health bureau said on Saturday that not a single case of human infection had been detected after major hospitals in Beijing checked about 850,000 people.

In its latest effort to prevent bird flu, the city shut down and disinfected an illegal pigeon fair in Beishatan on Saturday.

In Northeast China's Liaoning Province, which reported its first case of fatal bird flu on November 3, the provincial office handling the disease gave the all-clear in six suspected outbreaks on Saturday.

(China Daily 11/14/2005 page2)