Some 200 officers from Singapore' s various agencies took part in a bird culling exercise on Thursday to test the city-state's readiness in case of a bird flu outbreak.
Codenamed Exercise Gallus 5, the exercise was held at the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority's (AVA) animal and plant health center in Northern island of Tuas on Thursday morning, according to local television Channel News Asia reports.
Some 1,500 "infected" chickens were culled in the exercise. After culling, the chickens were sent to the incinerator.
The food and veterinary watchdog said that the exercise was to ensure that the activation and recall process for emergency response staff, biosecurity protection of personnel and its decontamination process were in order.
It was also to test AVA's coordination with other agencies.
Singapore has five chicken farms which breed 2 million chickens. The country also imports live chickens from Malaysia and frozen chickens from Brazil.
Bird flu outbreak has not occurred in Singapore to date, but Maliki Osman, Parliamentary Secretary of National Development, warned the threat of the disease.
"There will always be a threat, there will always be a possibility. Today's scenario is one where we tested the possibility of a consignment coming through the checkpoints. There are other possibilities too. So we should not sit on our laurels and assume that we are protected," he said.
Source:Xinhua
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