Press Releases

Transcript of Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food

Following is a transcript of the remarks made by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, at a media session at Central Government Offices today (January 24):

Reporter: Dr Yeoh, some restaurants actually have taken chickens off from their menu, will there be any further actions against bird flu?

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: I think restaurants should not take chickens off the menu. As I said, chicken is very healthy meat. In fact, the H5N1 virus is carried in ducks and geese. I read in the reports this morning like you did that some people are saying that they are not going to take chickens. They are going to take ducks and geese but ducks and geese are carriers of H5N1. I think the public should not worry about the chickens they consume. The bird flu is not transmitted through consumption of meat. It is transmitted through the excretion of the birds. Unless you are in contact with the excretion of birds, you won't get the bird flu. Certainly, meat which is cooked does not transmit bird flu. So, I think the products that are going to the markets, going to the restaurants should be healthy because all meat contains bacteria and virus of all sorts because the birds that are killed are not sterile. So, they do contain bacteria and virus of all sorts but most of these don't go into men and don't cause disease in men but some do. So the meat has got to be cooked adequately and properly. And if it is cooked, it should not affect the individual eating it. As I said, poultry is healthy meat.

Reporter: Are you confident that we will have chickens, geese and other poultry available ahead of the Lunar New Year?

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: They are still available. As I said, bird flu is endemic in Hong Kong. We continue to expect to see sporadic cases of bird flu. But the whole issue is in terms of preventing an outbreak and of course the primary objective is to make sure that whatever infections there are in birds and whatever animals that come into close contact with men don't transmit the infection to men. So, the type of virus we are seeing now is not the virus that caused disease in men in 1997. Obviously, we have to be very careful. We are following this virus we are currently seeing to look for signs of mutation because if there are signs of mutation, they may go to men. It is really to keep the levels of infection very low because if the levels of infection are very low, the chance of mutation is low. You also don't get large outbreaks which really cause alarm and are also detrimental to business. So currently the whole strategy is to risk-manage and reduce the virus loads in the chickens. That's why we are advocating that there should be rest days in the markets because a rest day will eliminate the virus load. So if there are one or two birds that are carrying virus, then you kill them off and they don't spread it and transmit to other birds. Imagine that if you have 100,000 birds all flocked together, and there are one or two birds infected, if you don't eliminate that population, the virus will continue to transmit very quickly. So this rest day business is very important and we are discussing with the markets. It will also help them. It will also reduce the risk of having large outbreaks. Once you have the rest days, then you eliminate the virus from the markets and you clean up the markets. Even if you have a few infected birds, by the time of the next rest day, most of the virus will have been eliminated and you don't have a large number of chickens which are infected. So that's our strategy in the markets. 

Of course the cleanliness and to have less over-crowding (markets are also important). Less crowded the markets are, the less risk of the spread. If the chickens cannot be sold in one day and they are sold the next day, then obviously you have one chicken transmitted to other. This happens to one or two. What we are seeing is that occasionally there are birds infected that are going into the markets. If those markets are crowded, there is a greater chance of spreading and more birds will die. So we see episodes now and then in the markets which are particularly crowded and the department is doing quite a lot of work with the stall owners for them to understand why all these are necessary. On the farms, I think the farmers are now much more cooperative and they understand it. I met with the poultry breeders about ten days ago. They were all very forthcoming. They understood that the vaccine will help to prevent an outbreak but it is not a long-term solution. Long-term solution must be that you have much better biosecurity because you want to prevent bacteria and virus from being brought into the farm. This can occur from the wild birds. It can occur from the workers because if the workers bring contaminants into the farms, it will spread very quickly in the farms. So you need to have very very stringent biosecurity conditions. The farms will need to be updated in many of their practices in terms of the general hygienic standards etc. The vaccine is just a complementary measure. I think they understand that. We are certainly making progress. So the objectives now are really trying to reduce the risk in Hong Kong and to make sure that the infection doesn't go to men.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion)

End/Friday, January 24, 2003
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