Six departments under the State Council on Tuesday jointly
issued a notice, demanding their subordinate bodies to step up bird
flu inspections at borders.
The notice said currently the bird flu epidemic situation is
severe in some neighboring countries and regions, and illegal fowl
imports are still occurring in the country's border areas.
Therefore, relevant departments should take preventing bird flu
from China as an important and imperative task.
The State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and
Quarantine, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Agriculture,
Ministry of Commerce,
General Administration of Customs and State Administration of
Industry and Commerce released the notice.
The notice required relevant departments to ban imports of
poultry from bird flu-affected Vietnam, Japan and South Korea and
to increase the quarantine of fowls and disinfecting.
The notice said all quarantine organizations must intensify
supervision on goods, and transport from affected areas. And all
customs and public security bodies must strictly crack down on any
smuggling cases from the bird flu-stricken areas.
Every quarantine organization should make an immediate
inspection of the country's fowl markets, cold storage and fowl
processing factories. And illegally imported poultry, which has
been intercepted, must be transferred to quarantine departments as
soon as possible for destruction or return, according to the
notice.
On the same day, a joint inspection team, made up of the members
of the above six departments inspected a fowl market and a cold
storage in Beijing, and no bird flu case was spotted.
A quarantine official said such supervision will be launched
nationwide.
So far, there are still no reported cases of bird flu in
China.
The Ministry of Health on Sunday issued an urgent notice calling
for the training health workers by March 15 on ways to prevent the
spread of bird flu.
(Xinhua News Agency January 21, 2004)