Now standing at a reported 63 infections and 14 deaths from the H7N9 bird flu virus, the latest food related public health issue in China shows no sign of abating.
Beginning in eastern China and our very own neck of the woods in Nanjing, bird flu has tragically moved to Beijing where a seven year old girl, the daughter of workers in the poultry industry, is in hospital recovering from the virus. Her four year old neighbour has also tested positive in a case that worryingly may indicate the virus has mutated again and can now be passed between humans.
While the official line may be that eating cooked eggs and chicken continues to be quite harmless, a large portion of the general public have concerns founded in the belief that our poultry may have ended up on our plates after a, at best, somewhat dubious journey.
The food supply chain in China unquestionably has issues, and it is not just local farmers or retailers who have been caught red-handed, knowingly or otherwise. Last month, French giant Carrefour closed down one of its stores in Henan province after being exposed for changing expiration dates on chicken products and selling regular chicken as more expensive free-range poultry.
Another high profile case from a little less than two years ago hit close to home with the arrest of ten people, including four government employees and six butchers, in Nanjing on 15th June, 2011. Nanjing city procuratorate revealed that the government staff, including three officials, were representatives of Jianye District trade bureau, health inspection station and veterinary station. All were accused of neglect of duty. The six butchers, all from Xingwang Slaughterhouse, were accused of selling poisonous food, having knowingly participated in feeding chemical additives to the livestock and in the sale of the involved animals.
The latest bird flu outbreak has acerbated the issue that is closely connected to traditional farming and retail practice in the Middle Kingdom. Speaking with the New York Times’ Dealbook, retired virologist Christoph Scholtissek, said “Only in China do you have cohabitation of pigs, humans and water birds… Almost all flu infections begin in China and then spread to Europe.” Making things more difficult is the fact that Chinese people prefer to shop in traditional wet markets, places that positively encourage virus transmission.
For many, the choice has been simple; take poultry off the menu. For others not willing to forsake their chicken fix, a recommended course of action is to only source poultry products that come directly from high quality farms where they have strict and transparent testing. Nanjing Expat supplier Fields carries frozen roasting chicken from Argentina and Natural Poultry Group Limited (NPG) chicken containing no antibiotics or chemicals, and organic eggs that hail from one of the best organic farms in Anhui province. The company has reported very significant increases in sales of meat and poultry in the past few weeks.
The threats posed by H7N9 are very real, but we can optimistically point to the previous outbreak of bird flu that dissipated over the course of a thankfully short period. When that time comes, complacency itself should be far from our minds, for as a densely populated country in which people live in close proximity to the animals they eat, China is the perfect breeding ground for lethal species-hopping viruses. Arguably the two most serious flu pandemics of the last 100 years began in China, in 1957 and 1968, as did the terrifying 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
