The great chicken slaughter in Hong Kong has seen government office workers turn executioners as authorities scramble to wipe out the source of a deadly bird flu. Officials said yesterday that the massive scale of the operation to kill some 1.3 million chickens meant government workers have had to swap their pens and desks for knives and poison gas.
The Director of Agriculture and Fisheries, Ms Lessie Wei, said half of her department's 2,400 staff were working on the problem, and hardly any had experience of handling live - or dead - chickens.
Desk workers were involved in handling the logistics of the operation as well as gassing chickens to death in plastic bags, she told a news conference.
She added: "I have country parks wardens (killing chickens), I have workers who clean the country parks, I have dog catchers. So if there are people complaining that I'm not catching dogs quickly enough, I hope you can understand."
Many of her office workers had turned into proficient chicken executioners. Some 770,000 chickens have already been killed.
"Staff are working at full steam," Mr Stephen Ip, the secretary for Economic Services, told the news conference. He added all of Hong Kong's chickens should be dead by the end of yesterday.
Four people have died from bird flu since May from a total of 19 suspected and confirmed cases.