South Korea, Hong Kong join British poultry ban

SEOUL, Feb 6 (Reuters) South Korea and Hong Kong today said they had joined a growing list of countries banning British poultry due to the country's first outbreak of a deadly strain of bird flu in domestic poultry.

Russia and Japan have already banned imports and the Financial Times reported that South Africa and Indonesia had followed suit.

South Korea imported about 3 million dollars in poultry products from Britain last year. It will either cull or return 3,645 ducks imported for breeding that it had in quarantine in the country, the agriculture ministry said.

Hong Kong, which imported 11,400 tonnes of British poultry and poultry products in the first 10 months of last year, announced late last night it would suspend the imports with immediate effect, an official said.

Britain culled almost 160,000 turkeys on Monday after discovery of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian flu on a farm in eastern England run by Europe's largest turkey producer, Bernard Matthews.

REUTERS RL KP0936