HONG KONG: The Centre for Food Safety (CFS) of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department announced today (January 17) that in view of notifications from the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) about outbreaks of highly pathogenic H5N8 avian influenza in the State of Bavaria in Germany and Kottayam District in Kerala State of India, and an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5 avian influenza in Uganda and a notification from the Japanese authorities about an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Gifu Prefecture, the CFS has banned the import of poultry meat and products (including poultry eggs) from the above places with immediate effect to protect public health in Hong Kong.
A CFS spokesman said that in the first 11 months of last year, Hong Kong imported about 9 300 tonnes of frozen poultry meat and 2 million poultry eggs from Germany, and about 6 800 tonnes of frozen poultry meat and 45 million poultry eggs from Japan. Hong Kong at present has established a protocol with India for the import of poultry eggs but not for poultry meat, and no poultry eggs were imported into Hong Kong from India in the same period. In addition, as Hong Kong has not established any protocol with Uganda for imports of poultry meat and eggs, there is no import of such commodities from Uganda.
“The CFS has contacted the German, Indian, Japanese and Ugandan authorities over the issues and will closely monitor information issued by the OIE on avian influenza outbreaks in the countries concerned. Appropriate action will be taken in response to the development of the situation,” the spokesman said.
