Chicken dumped on Fiji.
Monday, April 24, 2006
THE largest supplier of New Zealand poultry says chickens exported to Fiji are safe and healthy.
Tegel, which caters for over 60 per cent of the market, said New Zealand exercised stringent health regulations and quarantine laws.
A company statement said such measures kept their country free of serious poultry diseases and all exports were safe.
It said the Fiji Quarantine Department had accepted New Zealand poultry because it had met the requirements they set for imports.
Tegel was reacting to comments made by the Rooster Poultry managing director Don McLellan, who is part of the poultry industry in Fiji and abroad for the past 30 years.
Mr McLellan said millions of birds were imported into the country each year and authorities needed to place restrictions.
He said chickens imported were surplus ones from overseas countries who used Fiji as a dumping ground.
Mr McLellan said people were worried about the bird flu that could be transmitted through importing commercial poultry.
He said while local poultry companies like Rooster Poultry and Crest Chicken Limited were inspected to ensure they met safety and health standards, no inspectors were sent overseas to check supplier's standards and processing plants.
But Tegel said its product had no added hormones and no genetically engineered crops were used to feed all their chickens.
Mr McLellan had said that restricting imports would mean greater demand for local birds, which would cause local companies to increase production and raise the number of people in poultry employment.
The World Health Organisation confirmed last week that there have been 12 human cases of bird flu in Egypt, four of which was fatal.
This took the global total to 113 deaths out of 204 cases since 2003.
The WHO said one of its collaborating laboratories in Britain had full validated the test results obtained in Egypt.
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