HK, mainland bodies clash on melamine tests
Poultry trade fears loss of business
Hong Kong and mainland authorities disagree over the details of testing live chickens for melamine content, a spokesman for the live poultry wholesale trade said.
The chairman of the Hong Kong Poultry Wholesalers' Association, Tsui Ming-tuen, yesterday expressed worry that business might be affected since the two sides would probably take a long time to agree on how to conduct the testing.
A mainland official has criticised Hong Kong authorities for being unreasonable, and asked the mainland authority to go ahead and conduct tests on live chickens in its usual way, Mr Tsui said, citing a conversation he had with a mainland official.
'The official sounded very annoyed when I spoke to him on the phone,' he said. 'He said Hong Kong now imported only about 5,000 chickens a day, but the city authority made a fuss about everything concerning the melamine test.
'Testing chickens is more complicated than testing eggs. I am told that the [two sides] are arguing about how to test chickens. Should the test focus only on chicken meat? Or should it include skin, internal organs and droppings, too? They are still arguing about this.'
Including melamine in inspection certificates for live chickens would be the next step, once the two sides had reached an agreement on how to test live chickens, Mr Tsui said.
Melamine is a toxic industrial chemical used to make plastic and glue.
It is added to food to make the protein content appear higher.
Asked if melamine testing would be included in the inspection certificates for live chickens in future, a Food and Health Bureau spokeswoman would not comment.
But she acknowledged that city officials were in talks with mainland authorities about including melamine in inspection certificates for eggs.
The wholesale association said it was worried that wholesale prices of live chickens would increase very quickly if the two sides failed to reach a consensus soon on how to test live chickens.
'It seems to me that the government just doesn't want to import live chickens to Hong Kong,' Mr Tsui said. 'The administration wants to make it difficult for us to import chickens, and consumers will have to pay a high price for eating chickens that are bought live.'
The association said that although the wholesale price of live chickens had earlier dropped to HK$22 a catty (600 grams) from slightly over HK$30, the price would go up again once the stocks of local chickens were finished.
Meanwhile, melamine test results on chilled pork and chilled chicken have been satisfactory, the Centre for Food Safety revealed yesterday.
Some 56 samples of milk, milk powder, infant formula, baby food, eggs, chilled chicken and chilled pork were covered in the latest round of tests.
