SCMP, October 15, 2003 The government has finally answered a letter sent by US actor and animal rights activist Martin Sheen, who expressed concern about Hong Kong's treatment of live poultry.
Three weeks after Sheen wrote to Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, officials replied that animal welfare was an integral part of the city's public health service.
An official letter sent yesterday said the government would consult the poultry trade to consider banning the sale of live chickens in wet markets, an option which Sheen said he supported.
'In devising measures to tackle the avian influenza problem, we have also taken into account the need to protect animal welfare,' said the government letter, issued by the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau.
'[A sales ban] will have a profound effect not only on the live poultry trade but also on the community's traditional eating habits.'
Sheen, best known in Hong Kong for playing President Josiah Bartlet in the hit television series The West Wing, said the sale of live poultry was not only cruel but a danger to public health because of diseases such as bird flu.
'The anguish of animals who are transported to and sold at live markets is obvious. Chickens are crammed into tiny, filthy wire cages, suffering tremendously from extreme heat and stress, and many die from heat exhaustion,' Sheen wrote in the letter dated September 23 and sent on behalf of the international animal welfare group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta).