Chicken off festival menu for many

Chicken was absent from many local dinner tables last night as Hongkongers celebrated winter solstice, with wet market vendors complaining of a drop in sales because of bird flu fears.

Trader Ma Ping-loon, a member of the Poultry Dealers and Workers Association, said business was down about 40 per cent from last year's festival.

"We're badly affected by this. Very few people are buying chicken compared with last year. Sales have been slow all day," Ma said.

He added that the price for one catty (about 600 grams) of fresh chicken fell 30 per cent yesterday to about HK$45.

A live-chicken vendor at the Java Road Municipal Services Building in North Point said sales of both local chickens and those imported from the mainland were down compared with last year, but the prices were about the same.

One shopper at the market said she would serve seafood instead of chicken this year. "I'm avoiding any form of contact with chicken, whether it's dead or alive," she said, adding that she had made the decision after news of the first death from the new strain of bird flu affecting humans, H10N8, in Jiangxi province.

Mainland health authorities last week confirmed that an elderly woman died earlier this month after contracting H10N8, another strain of bird flu that has crossed the species barrier.