A vendor sells live chickens at Kowloon City market yesterday. Edmond Tang

About 30 percent of live-poultry retailers will continue operating in Hong Kong after most of them applied to surrender their licenses this week in exchange for a government payout.

Announcing the results of the buyout application yesterday, Secretary for Food and Health York Chow said 333, or 72 percent of all 464 retailers, have applied to give up their licenses.

That reduces the number of live-poultry sellers in the SAR to 131.

A third of the retailers who have submitted buyout applications have also applied to sell frozen poultry, Chow said.

Fifty-six percent of live-poultry farmers have surrendered their licenses to keep livestock.

Seventy percent of wholesalers and 80 percent of transporters have applied to leave the live-poultry trade.

The health chief said that, so far, 835 workers whose employers will close have submitted applications for one-off grants.

The government will pay HK$660 million to poultry farmers, wholesalers, retailers and transporters.

Chow said the percentage of the retailers accepting the buyout payments is reasonable.

He believed that fewer live-poultry retailers, coupled with the policy of not allowing live chickens to be kept overnight at markets, will minimize the bird-flu risk in the city.

Apart from fewer retailers, there will also be fewer live chickens sold.

According to Chow, the mainland authorities have agreed to reduce the daily supply of live chickens to the SAR to 5,000 starting yesterday.

He expected the total number of live chickens available in Hong Kong every day will drop to 10,000.

He noted the government will proceed with a central slaughtering plant as soon as possible, but the scale will be much smaller than earlier planned.

"Since only a small number of poultry operations will continue to operate live-poultry businesses, the scale of the proposed central slaughtering plant will need to be adjusted," he said, adding that the government will soon decide the facility's scale and operation mode.

It was business as usual yesterday for the two live-poultry retailers who remained at Kowloon City market.

They said the wholesale price yesterday was about 20 percent more expensive, and they sold chickens at HK$36-38 per catty.

"A long-time customer begged me not to surrender my license. She said she does not know where else to buy live chickens," one of the retailers, "Sister Ling", said.

Although live chickens are getting more expensive, she said the customers don't mind, as long as they can eat fresh chickens.

(HK Edition 09/26/2008 page1)