Using gas, knives and sometimes just their hands, officials and poultry farmers slaughtered 1.3 million chickens in Hong Kong yesterday in a desperate effort to eliminate the source of the deadly "bird flu" virus which has killed four people, and ease fears of an epidemic.
Ducks, geese, quail and caged pigeons were also put down in the unprecedented poultry massacre, carried out by 1,000 government workers at 160 chicken farms, 39 mixed poultry farms and two wholesale markets. The operation was mounted in the hope that the virus can only be transmitted from birds to people, which means it can be contained at source. Only if the infection spreads from human to human can it become an epidemic.
There have been 11 confirmed bird flu cases in Hong Kong, three of whom died, and nine suspected cases, one of whom died. Medical staff at Hong Kong hospitals have been inundated with people seeking tests for flu-like symptoms. In one case a health worker caught the virus after contact with an infected person (a child who died in May) though it was probably through contact with bodily fluids rather than by coughing or sneezing.
"The source of the infection by the H5N1 (avian) virus is from infected poultry, in this case chickens," said Ms Margaret Chan, Hong Kong's health director. "The mode of transmission is mainly from bird-to-man, plus a rather inefficient man-to-man transmission at this stage."
As Hong Kong became a chicken-free territory yesterday, a poultry glut worsened in mainland China, driving many breeders into bankruptcy. Hong Kong normally imports 75,000 chickens a day from Guangdong province, but all traffic in poultry has been banned since Christmas Eve on fears that the virus was coming from farms across the border. The price of live chickens dropped by half in the province as local poultry farmers try to find new markets, according to yesterday's China Daily. It said the area has 120,000 chicken farmers producing 470 million chickens a year.
Many health experts have voiced doubts about the thoroughness of Chinese vetting procedures. Officials of the Geneva-based World Health Organisation will visit Guangdong this week to carry out tests on the poultry farms. Mr Huang Shaorong, head of the Guangdong Poultry Association, said no trace of the H5N1 killer virus had been found in their chicken farms.
The ban on chicken imports from China will stay in force until a strict inspection system is in place at the border, Hong Kong's agriculture director, Mr Lessie Wei, told reporters. Under the new system, shipments of chickens from China will not be sold until test results are known.
Yesterday's mass slaughter of birds in Hong Kong - almost all of them originally destined for the dining table at some time or other - began at dawn when workers bundled chickens into plastic containers and killed them by pumping in carbon dioxide, before sterilising the remains and dumping them in eight landfill sites. There were bloody scenes at 1,000 live poultry stalls where vendors used knives to slit the throats of chickens and drain away the blood before putting them in plastic refuse bags for burial. Some had their necks broken by hand. Police in sanitary masks checked cars to ensure none were smuggled away.
Many dealers expressed anger at the loss of their livelihood, although most agreed it had to be done. They will receive compensation of £2.50 per bird. Hong Kong newspapers estimated the total cost of compensation at HK$40 million (£3.5 million). The Agriculture and Fisheries Department declared a farm and a section of a wholesale market infected places on Sunday morning after the sudden deaths of many chickens in the market. Workers were called back from holiday and sent out to do a census of birds and to supervise their destruction. Ducks, geese and other birds on chicken farms were also being killed because cross-infection could not be ruled out, said Mr Stephen Ip, Secretary for Economic Services.
Today a massive cleansing operation will take place when sanitation workers disinfect the stalls and farms where poultry was killed.
Chicken has disappeared from menus in Hong Kong restaurants and the territory's Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd has stopped serving chicken on flights to and from Taiwan, where passengers have expressed concern over the spread of the virus. However shoppers are buying frozen imported chicken in Hong Kong supermarkets.
The Philippines President, Mr Fidel Ramos, has ordered his health authorities to monitor the outbreak after reports that two Filipina maids in Hong Kong had been infected. One is now in a coma in a Hong Kong hospital. More than 100,000 Filipinas work as domestic helpers in the autonomous territory.