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Macao Resumes Chicken Imports from China's Interior
The Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) resumed Monday the imports of live chickens from China's interior, one month after its entire poultry population were slaughtered to contain the spread of a bird flu virus.
The first batch of 11,000 live chickens were transported to Macao this morning, about 100 of which passed stringent quarantine inspections as samples at the Barrier Gate.
A certain number of the poultry carried to Macao should be checked as samples, and the figure should be no less than 13 if the truck carries less than 500 chickens, ducks or geese, according to Jose Sales Marques, president of the Provisional Municipal Council of Macao.
The poultry should be transported in special coops to prevent mutual infection and slaughtered on time, while all the retail sales sites should be cleaned and sterilized before the poultry reach there, he said.
Macao destroyed roughly 60,000 poultry when the H5N1 virus was found in a few geese in mid-May. The SAR government allocated 5.5 million patacas (687,500 U.S. dollars) for destroying the poultry and compensating the workers and vendors for their losses.
The price of chickens is estimated to go up slightly due to the brisk purchases for the time being, but it will become stable when there is enough supply of chickens, authorities said.
No resident in Macao has been reportedly infected with the bird flu.
Macao has not yet announced when it will resume the imports of waterfowl.
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