Xu Fang and Ning Bo/Shanghai Daily news
A vendor showcases his pet birds at a
flower and bird market on Jiangyin Road yesterday. The city will ban the sale of
birds in 41 such markets starting today. ¡ª Zhang Suoqing
Local agriculture and health departments have built a database about 20,000
people who work in the city's poultry industry to help fight bird flu, officials
said yesterday.
The Xinhua news agency said the 20,000 people are involved in
jobs like poultry production, transport, trade and processing.
The database
lists the kinds of jobs they do, their workplaces and phone numbers, the scale
of the operations and the kind of contact they have with poultry.
If bird flu
breaks out, the government can quickly decide if poultry need to be culled,
carry out an epidemiology investigation and determine the source of the
infection.
Twenty thousand notices about bird flu prevention and control will
be issued to poultry breeders and other people in close contact with
poultry.
Warnings are being posted in hotels, restaurants and suburban
villages to remind people to be cautious.
No pet birds can be sold in the
city from today.
The Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Administrative Bureau
issued a statement yesterday, banning the sale of birds in the city's 41 flower
and bird markets and all other markets where they used to be
traded.
Resumption of trade will depend on the country's bird-flu
situation.
Now is the city's peak time for migratory birds. The bureau's
statement says the changing weather provides favorable conditions for an
outbreak of the lethal virus.
"A considerable number of traded birds in the
markets were caught in the wild from across the country, including the bird flu
stricken areas, and it's impossible to inoculate them," the statement
said.
Officials are concerned that if any bird has the virus, it could be
spread quickly in such markets.
Only three human cases of bird flu have been
reported in China.
No bird-flu cases have been reported in Shanghai, but
officials have said the city is not taking any chances.