Slaughter leaves chefs in the soup
Chefs are scrambling to come up with replacement ingredients for Chinese menus traditionally dominated by chicken.
The slaughter of the birds will affect everything from dim sum to shark-fin soups, according to restaurateur and Federation of Hong Kong Restaurant Owners vice-president Yeung Koon-yat.
'Chefs are scratching their heads to come up with new substitutes,' he said. 'Live chickens give a sweet taste to shark-fin soups that frozen ones can't match.
'In place of 10 live chickens, you need 20 frozen ones to make a large bowl of soup, as well as a lot more Chinese smoked ham.' He said some restaurants were giving up on dim sum made from chicken.
But the bird flu scare may mean more sales for food retailers and restaurants specialising in overseas frozen chickens.
Two supermarket chains, Wellcome and Park'N Shop, predicted a large rise in frozen chicken consumption.
Both import mainly from the United States and Brazil, with smaller shipments from Australia and Denmark.
Kentucky Fried Chicken imported its usual 130 tonnes of US chickens this month. A spokesman said business had not been affected.
The Health Department reassured the public that mainland and local eggs were safe to eat as long as they were properly cooked.
Hong Kong imported 330.5 million kilograms of frozen chickens from overseas, excluding China, worth $3.63 billion between January and October.
But most were exported to the mainland with less than half of them being eaten in Hong Kong.
