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HONG KONG - The demand for chickens and pet birds for upcoming Chinese New Year festivities has raised fears of a surge in bird smuggling into Hong Kong, heightening the risk of outbreaks of the deadly bird flu.
Experts have called for greater vigilance at the city's border with China, where flu-infected birds were smuggled in last year, sparking the first outbreak of H5N1 among local birds in years.
A wild bird found dead two weeks ago with the killer virus, and another found last week with a less virulent strain, are believed to have been brought into the territory from China, one of the world's bird flu blackspots.
Their discovery set alarm bells ringing as the city where bird flu was first discovered among humans in 1997 prepared to welcome hundreds of thousands of mainland Chinese visitors over the Chinese New Year holiday, which begins next month.
"There will be a huge flood of people into Hong Kong, and ample opportunity for someone to smuggle potentially infected birds into the territory," warned microbiologist and former health industry legislator Lo Wing-lok.
The H5N1 virus is transmitted through contact with infected birds' waste, and since 1997 human infections have been relatively few compared to the millions of poultry and other birds that have died.
But health officials have warned that if the disease mutated into a form easily transmissible by humans, it could cause a pandemic with the potential to kill millions of people.
Costly bird flu scares in the past -- especially the 1997 outbreak, which claimed the lives of six people -- have prompted Hong Kong to impose strict import quotas and checks on live birds imported from China.
As a result, smuggling of birds into the city is rife, especially around Chinese New Year, when chickens and pet birds play important ritual roles.
Just as westerners eat turkey at Christmas, chicken is considered the traditional Lunar New Year dish for Chinese.
The smuggling of an infected chicken intended as a new year gift into the former British territory last year sparked a chain of infections that, had authorities not been so quick at containment, threatened to spread throughout Hong Kong's two million poultry birds.
As a result, increased Customs patrols were set up along the border, a kilometre-wide strip that contains villages whose residents pass freely in an out of both China and Hong Kong.
Pet birds are also bought in large numbers over the period, as it is a traditional Buddhist custom to free caged animals in order to bring good luck for the coming year.
The release of birds in this way has been blamed for the two flu-infected birds discovered in the past two weeks.
"They were species that typically live in rural areas, but these examples were found in city areas way out of their habitats -- there's only one way they could have got there and that's by human transport," said Martin Williams, a local ornithologist.
The local Buddhist Association denied its members released birds.
"We have discouraged this practice for many years, since the emergence of bird flu," said association spokesman Martin Cheung. "We encourage people to release fish instead."
But a study paper by a Hong Kong University ecology post-graduate student found that some 400,000-600,000 birds were released in this way last year.
At that time, a spate of flu-infected birds were found around the city, some of them near Buddhist temples where, in years gone by, monks had released thousands of birds at a time.
"This is a huge commercial interest and goes on throughout the year," said HKU ecology Professor Richard Corlett, who oversaw the study.
"The study was for 2005, but there is no evidence that the practice has abated since then."
Corlett said the so-called religious releases were ecological disasters waiting to happen, as birds from all over China were being sold here for as little as four dollars (51 US cents) each and many species had become established in Hong Kong's forests.
More worrying, however, he said the practice elevated the risk of bird flu infections not only among birds but also among humans.
"To say they are smuggled in is to exaggerate the issue -- they are brought in by trucks in their thousands in cages that are absolutely covered in faeces," he said. "I wouldn't want to go near them in anything but a full biohazard warfare suit."
Williams believed the smuggling of birds across the border posed a greater risk of spreading bird flu than the migration of wild birds, which many experts blame for the transmission of the disease around the world in outbreaks that have killed more than 150 people.
"These birds are kept in appalling conditions in China, where they are caged in markets next to poultry birds, the biggest source of the disease," he said. "The trade must be stopped for the birds' sake."
Lo agreed: "It's not just a case for the government here to do something -- the government in China must also act."
- AFP /ls
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