The Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR)
is temporarily not considering stopping the import live poultry
from adjacent
Guangdong Province, south China, said a visiting Macao official
on Wednesday.
Isabel Celeste Jorge, administrator of the Committee of the
Administration of Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau of the Macao
SAR, made the remark on Wednesday while paying a visit to Zhongshan
City, Guangdong Province.
During a meeting with officials of the Guangdong Provincial
Bureau of Inspection and Quarantine for Exit and Entry and leaders
of Zhongshan City, Ms. Jorge said Sunday's confirmation of the
suspected death from bird flu of a 32-year-old man in Guangdong did
not mean there was a bird flu pandemic outbreak at live poultry
farms across the province.
She said they had been having good communication and cooperation
with Guangdong Province departments for inspection and quarantine
and therefore Macao would certainly not stop the import of live
poultry just because of an unexpected single case of human
infection.
The Macao official and her entourage visited a meat chicken farm
in Zhongshan City, a key place for supplying poultry to Macao, and
was impressed by the strict inspection and quarantine measures
taken there.
Guangdong now provides Macao with more than 10,000 head of
poultry daily, including frozen ones, according to Huang Weiming,
deputy director of the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Inspection
and Quarantine for Exit and Entry.
In a related development, the Guangdong Provincial Bureau for
Industry and Commerce on Wednesday issued an urgent circular
demanding local branch organizations to step up market supervision
and ban poultry without animal quarantine and inspection
certificates from entering the markets.
(Xinhua News Agency March 9, 2006)