High E. coli levels found in 7 Aberdeen fish market stalls

Wholesalers thought to have used water from typhoon shelter

Seven stalls at Aberdeen's unregulated wholesale seafood market have fish swimming in waters with dangerously high levels of E. coli bacteria, inspectors revealed yesterday. Officials said seven wholesalers would be prosecuted for violating hygiene regulations.

The inspectors found the bacterial counts in their tanks were up to seven times the government's safety limits for fish tank water, which is 610 units for every 100 millilitres of water.

'The seven substandard samples contained E. coli ranging from 620 to 4,800 units per 100 millilitres of water,' said Cheuk Wing-hing, deputy director of food and environmental hygiene.

A department spokesman said: 'We believe some of these fish stall operators are taking sea water directly from the Aberdeen typhoon shelter for use in their fish tanks.'

E. coli counts show the extent of faecal contamination of water. Poisoning by the bacteria may cause severe diarrhoea, abdominal cramps and vomiting. In serious cases it may lead to death.

The E. coli contamination cases follows last Wednesday's discovery of cholera bacteria at a stall at the Aberdeen promenade's public car park, which hosts the wholesale fish market.

Legislators attending a meeting of the Legco food safety and environmental hygiene panel yesterday were outraged that the fish operators had been allowed to operate for years without being regulated by the government.

Eighteen fish wholesalers at the Aberdeen promenade supply 40 per cent of the fish consumed in Hong Kong. Yet for the past 20 years, the market has operated without government regulation.

'Those fish stalls supply 30 to 40 per cent of the whole of Hong Kong's live fish. That is a huge volume of business and they have been there for 20 years without a licence and actually occupying government land without any legal status,' said Fred Li Wah-ming, the Democratic Party legislator who is chairman of the Legco panel.

Mr Cheuk said moves were under way to deal with the illegal stalls by making them operate under the Fish Marketing Organisation (FMO), which operates independently but is financed by the government.

He said due to the cholera discovery, the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department had agreed to consider speeding up the process for the FMO to assume management responsibility of the market by next month.