Residents flocked to wet markets across the territory to pick up live chickens, and local TV reported that many chicken stalls had sold out by noon given the reduced supply.

The discovery in June of birds infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus in four wet markets across Hong Kong led to the culling of thousands of fowl at all retail markets. A 21 day ban on live poultry sales and imports was then imposed.

Since the latest avian flu outbreak, Hong Kong authorities have tightened biosecurity measures further at local markets — where squawking caged fowl are handpicked then slaughtered on the spot for customers, in sometimes unhygienic conditions.

Hong Kong poultry traders will no longer be allowed to keep live birds in stalls overnight. They must slaughter all remaining birds each night and cleanse and disinfect their cages daily.

Authorities have also stepped up efforts to overhaul the live poultry trade — offering a compensation package of more than HK$1 billion ($128 million) to buy out poultry traders including farmers, wholesalers and retailers.

In its place, a centralized slaughtering center has been proposed.

Before the ban, Hong Kong’s daily chicken imports totalled about 20,000 chickens from China, and another 15,000-20,000 from local farms, traders and officials have said. Experts have long warned that the H5N1 bird flu virus could mutate into a form that is easily transmitted from person to person. This could trigger a pandemic, killing millions of people.

Hong Kong has in the past carried out mass culls of poultry to try to control bird flu outbreaks, notably in 1997, when more than 1.4 million poultry were slaughtered and six people died from H5N1 infection.

Fears of the spread of infectious disease have run high since 2003, when an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) hit the city of nearly 7 million people.

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