Beijing takes anti-flu steps in fowl markets
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-10-30 21:38

Beijing authorities have confiscated 182 wild birds from traders and started disinfecting the city's largest live poultry wholesale market against avian flu, the Beijing News reported on Sunday.

A Chinese health worker sprays disinfectant over chickens in cages at a poultry market in China's capital Beijing October 30, 2005. Beijing authorities have confiscated 182 wild birds from traders and started disinfecting the city's largest live poultry wholesale market against bird flu, the Beijing News reported on Sunday. [Reuters]

"The trading of wild birds will not be permitted while the avian flu is active," the paper quoted a local official as saying in Beijing.

It also said the city's largest wholesale market for live poultry was disinfected three times daily and workers were being tested for the virus.

Poultry markets in China are suffering sluggish sales with customers fearful after three outbreaks of the deadly bird flu virus in the country in the past month, reports have said.

The outbreaks of the H5N1 virus, which scientists fear could mutate into a form that can pass easily between humans and lead to a global pandemic, has killed 3,800 chickens, ducks and geese in China in the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Anhui and Hunan.

Most human bird flu infections are due to handling sick birds or through contact with their droppings. Eating cooked meat is not a known source of infection.

China has reported no human bird flu infections since the latest H5N1 outbreak surfaced in Asia in 2003.