Letters
Counterfeit chicken?
I am bemused by your report that chickens originating in Brazil, Australia and other places are being smuggled into China via Hong Kong ('Feathers fly over counterfeit chicken trade', May 30).
Why is this happening? Because only American companies are allowed to export frozen chickens to the mainland. Surely the agreement that governs this trade must be the kind of restrictive trade practice that WTO regulations are supposed to discourage.
It sounds like a case of America running world trade to benefit itself at the expense of more efficient producers and Chinese consumers, who are forced to pay more for American produce.
A separate issue - but one that persuades me to boycott American foodstuffs - is that they could be genetically modified or fed genetically modified feed.
We should be more concerned about unfair trade by America than by the understandable attempts by Chinese traders to get a better deal.
ROD LANDER, North Point
Leave tunnel fees alone
Many people are raising false hopes that equalising the tunnel tolls of the three Hong Kong-Kowloon tunnels will ease traffic congestion.
These people probably have not used the Western tunnel too often, because any additional traffic exiting western Hong Kong island would face a snarl long before it reaches Shun Tak Centre heading east.
If traffic is diverted to the Western tunnel from other tunnels, all hell will break lose - the entire northern Hong Kong island road network will be at a standstill and the government and tunnel companies will have to quickly climb down and reverse course.
Keep the present tunnel tolls and let drivers decide what route to take. Hong Kong is a free market.
J.W.K. WONG, Central
