Following reports of bird flu in the US state of Delaware, China
has banned imports of poultry products from the United States.
At the same time, the country is stepping up it's monitoring of
migratory birds.
In a joint notice, the Ministry of Agriculture and the country's
quarantine agency yesterday suspended new import permits for US
fowl and cancelled any permits already issued.
US poultry products that arrived after February 7 but have not
gone through customs declaration and inspection procedure will be
destroyed or returned.
Only products verified as being free of the bird flu virus will
be allowed to enter China, the notice said.
The Ministry of Agriculture has also asked local authorities to
monitor the habits and habitats of migratory birds to prevent the
spread of the avian influenza virus that continues to move across
the world.
Migratory wild birds are a much-feared carrier of the virus.
Many of them have begun to return to Southeast Asia and south China
as the weather gets warmer.
The ministry asked medical staff to disinfect the habitats of
the migratory birds, collect their excrement and sanitize it.
Poultry raisers were reminded to segregate flocks from wild
birds, vaccinate waterfowl and prevent them from going to watering
areas inhabited by migrant birds or touching secretions and
feathers of the wild birds.
In addition, the ministry said waterfowl, such as ducks and
geese, should be separated from chickens. And birds must be kept
far away from livestock, including pigs.
China confirmed H5N1 infections in poultry in four previously
suspected outbreaks.
The confirmed bird flu cases are in Dongxiang County in east
China's Jiangxi
Province, Wujiagang District of Yichang in central Hubei
Province, Guandu District of Kunming and the No. 12
Agricultural Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction
Corps.
No human cases have been reported in China, although 19 people
have died from the disease in Thailand and Viet Nam in weeks.
By Tuesday, zoologists had failed to detect bird flu virus in
black-headed gulls that migrate from Siberia to Kunming, capital of
southwest China's Yunnan
Province, each winter.
Yang Zhimin, an official in charge of bird flu control and
prevention in the province, said a laboratory in Kunming, which
tests tropical and subtropical animals for viruses, has tested the
birds' blood serum, saliva and excrement and has not detected any
H5 type of virus.
The laboratory has been closely monitoring migratory birds since
bird flu outbreaks were first reported in Viet Nam, said Zhang
Nianzu, a researcher with the lab.
Known in China as red-beaked gulls, black-headed gulls first
appeared in Kunming in 1985, and about 30,000 of the species fly
there every winter.
In northwestern Shaanxi
Province, as many as 250 ibis -- a rare bird on the list of
most endangered species in China -- have been resettled to the
remote Qinling Mountains to protect them from the bird flu
epidemic, officials with the local forestry administration said
Tuesday.
The ibis formerly lived in a wildlife care center in the local
Zhouzhi County and the ibis protection station in the Yangxian
County. Yangxian is about 100 kilometers from the Chang'an District
of Xi'an, which was confirmed as being affected by the deadly H5N1
virus strain on February 8.
(China Daily February 11, 2004)