Hong Kong Edict Spares No Fowl

HONG KONG — After the government-ordered slaughter of chickens and other farm-raised fowl here, the only living thing left in a Kowloon poultry market Monday afternoon was a big, fat rat.

Sanitation workers and shop owners, wearing rubber boots and cotton masks, sprayed the empty bird cages in the Pei Ho Market with water and doused the floors of the large market district with disinfectant in an attempt to kill any lurking traces of a deadly influenza virus (H5N1 Type A) that has claimed four lives and hospitalized 16 people here.

In an extraordinary move to eradicate the virus--dubbed the “bird flu” because it was previously known to infect only chickens, ducks and other avian species--Hong Kong health authorities Monday supervised the slaughter of 1.3 million fowl in the territory’s many farms, markets and food stalls.

A poster on the wall of the Pei Ho Market carried the unprecedented government edict in Chinese and English: “For the prevention of bird flu, you are hereby addressed in the interest of public health to cease business immediately.”

At the larger poultry farms in the New Territories, workers from the Agricultural and Fisheries Department, wearing white suits and masks, arrived Monday carrying tanks of carbon dioxide gas to asphyxiate the birds.

Even pet chickens kept in schools for exhibits fell to the knife as more than 1,000 workers slit birds’ throats, stuffed them in plastic bags and powdered them with disinfectant before taking them to a landfill in the remote New Territories.

“This is one of the ways to prevent the spread of the disease--to get rid of the source,” said Chow Loi, an environmental health official supervising the bird kill. Chow said merchants will not be allowed to reopen until all poultry in Hong Kong is “confirmed to be safe.”

Demonstrating the wide effects of the bird flu scare here, many Hong Kong restaurants eliminated chicken from their menus. Crew members on a Hong Kong-based Dragon Air flight from Beijing to Hong Kong on Monday said they would not be serving a chicken course that was on the menu.

Meanwhile, teams of epidemiologists from Hong Kong and abroad, including a special task force from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, continued their attempts to unravel the mystery of how the flu strain made the jump from birds to people.

On Monday, a 25-year-old woman, in critical condition in a Hong Kong hospital, was confirmed as the virus’ 13th victim. Seven more people are suspected to be infected, pending final laboratory analysis.

Central to the medical mystery is why the virus attacks some individuals and not others. The 20 infected and suspected victims have ranged in age from 1 to 72. But 12 of the 20 cases are children younger than 8, causing doctors to conclude that the virus is most dangerous to the young.

So far, experts say, there is no evidence that the virus is spread via direct human-to-human contact. This has allayed fears somewhat that the bird flu is the first stage of a flu pandemic similar to those that originated in China and Hong Kong in 1957 and 1968. The 1968 “Hong Kong flu” pandemic killed an estimated 46,500 people worldwide.

Although H5N1 has been identified as a pure avian virus, none of the victims so far has been a poultry worker or shop owner--individuals who have the most contact with infected birds. Despite this puzzling fact, the government Monday decided to proceed with the giant bird kill apparently in part to alleviate public fears.

Despite objections from a handful of poultry farmers and shop owners, some of whom complained that the extreme government measures would destroy their businesses, the killing went on in an atmosphere of relative calm.

Most shop owners, who had seen poultry sales drop dramatically in recent weeks, appeared satisfied with the promised compensation of $3.85 for each slain bird.

In China, which had supplied more than 70% of Hong Kong’s poultry until the territory banned imports Christmas Eve, officials admitted that the curbs on poultry were hurting farmers in Guangdong province.

Huang Shaorong, director-general of the Guangdong Poultry Assn., said the ban had caused a chicken glut in the mainland’s domestic markets, halving prices from 55 cents a pound to 27 cents in Guangzhou, the provincial capital and major economic hub. Huang told a Chinese state newspaper that several Guangdong chicken farms are on the verge of bankruptcy.

Xiao Jun, an official with the Guangdong Animal and Plant Quarantine Bureau, said China would continue to cooperate with the territory’s ban despite the economic losses.

News of the Hong Kong bird slaughter came as no surprise to officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture: They have dealt with outbreaks of avian influenza in America--although never of the type that could be transmitted to humans. In the early 1980s, USDA veterinarians found chickens in southeastern Pennsylvania were infected with a strain of avian influenza, and officials were forced to slaughter about 17 million birds.

The strain of flu that can be transmitted to humans has not been detected in U.S. poultry; the nation has not imported poultry from Hong Kong in the last year, officials say.

Meantime, the National Broiler Council, a U.S. poultry industry trade group based in Washington, said its members, including Tyson Foods and Perdue Farms, will advertise in Hong Kong to reassure consumers that their exported, frozen products are safe.

California producers, faced with higher costs for feed and labor, do not export chickens, focusing instead on the domestic market for prime-quality, fresh birds.

At Pei Ho Market in the Sham Shui Po district here, shoppers continued to flock to vegetable, meat and fish stalls, many just yards from the shuttered poultry section with its 20 stalls. Some shoppers covered their mouths as they passed poultry stalls while others, including mothers with small children in tow, appeared completely unconcerned.

Ng Siu-kai, 48, owner of a vegetable shop next to the poultry market, complained that business had dropped by half. Picking a feather from a filthy ventilation fan in a corner of his shop, Ng said the slaughter had “polluted” the air with dander and grime.

“We were breathing this stuff all day,” Ng said, casually washing the feather off his finger in a basin where he was soaking a bunch of freshly peeled green onions.

Times staff writers Alissa J. Rubin in Washington and Martha Groves in Los Angeles contributed to this report.