East China's Shandong Province, one of the major poultry product exporters in the country, is now making painstaking efforts to prevent bird flu.

The local animal husbandry department has tightened checks in the whole province and given medical checks on all poultry products in the market.

All the poultry farms are now under closed-door operation and all the staff and equipment are being disinfected. In the meantime, a round-the-clock monitoring system and a daily reporting system have been adopted.

The province exports 230,000 to 350,000 tons of poultry products every year, accounting for more than half of the country's total export volume. So far, there is no bird flu case reported in the province.

Besides improvement in internal management, the local government also strengthened quarantine along ports and road crossings to prevent import of the virus.

To prepare for the worst, the local government has set up a crisis team made up of experts to ensure swift and decisive handling of emergency situation.

An official with the local foreign trade and economic cooperation department said they hope the preventive measures could help them minimize economic losses from export decrease.

Following China's confirming of its first case of bird flu in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and suspected cases in Hunan and Hubei provinces, the Republic of Korea and Japan have banned imports of poultry products from China.

China itself has suspended export of poultry and related products by Chinese farmers from bird flu-hit areas.

(Xinhua News Agency January 31, 2004)