The Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) is temporarily not considering stopping the import live poultry from adjacent Guangdong Province, south China, said a visiting Macao official on Wednesday.

Isabel Celeste Jorge, administrator of the Committee of the Administration of Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau of the Macao SAR, made the remark on Wednesday while paying a visit to Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province.

During a meeting with officials of the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Inspection and Quarantine for Exit and Entry and leaders of Zhongshan City, Ms. Jorge said Sunday's confirmation of the suspected death from bird flu of a 32-year-old man in Guangdong did not mean there was a bird flu pandemic outbreak at live poultry farms across the province.

She said they had been having good communication and cooperation with Guangdong Province departments for inspection and quarantine and therefore Macao would certainly not stop the import of live poultry just because of an unexpected single case of human infection.

The Macao official and her entourage visited a meat chicken farm in Zhongshan City, a key place for supplying poultry to Macao, and was impressed by the strict inspection and quarantine measures taken there.

Guangdong now provides Macao with more than 10,000 head of poultry daily, including frozen ones, according to Huang Weiming, deputy director of the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Inspection and Quarantine for Exit and Entry.

In a related development, the Guangdong Provincial Bureau for Industry and Commerce on Wednesday issued an urgent circular demanding local branch organizations to step up market supervision and ban poultry without animal quarantine and inspection certificates from entering the markets.

(Xinhua News Agency March 9, 2006)