Defiant farmer refuses to allow chicken slaughter to go ahead

A defiant chicken farmer in Pat Heung was last night still locked in a standoff with government inspectors trying to slaughter 10,000 of his birds.

Nearly 1,000 of his stock have died of bird flu in the past three days and officials wanted to slaughter about one-fifth of the 50,000 remaining chickens.

But the farmer has refused since Tuesday to allow any birds to be slaughtered because the government has refused to pledge compensation.

At least three out of the nine sheds at the farm are infected with the virulent H5 virus. In the past five weeks H5 has infected wild birds at two recreational parks, and chickens at five wet markets and another farm in the New Territories.

Following an outbreak of H5N1 in February last year, the government has adopted a 'search and destroy' strategy whenever a market or farm has been infected by the virus. Bird flu has appeared regularly in Hong Kong since 1997.

The quarantined farm in Pat Heung, which was also infected with H5N1 early last year, had adhered to most of the biosecurity measures but had only bird-proofed 80 per cent of the farm, a spokesman for the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said. Bird-proofing is aimed at preventing incursions of wild birds, which are natural hosts of the chicken flu.

'Some 360 dead chickens were found at the quarantined farm in Pat Heung today. We are closely monitoring the health conditions of other chickens in the farm,' a government spokeswoman said.