China and bird flu: not credible

The UK has a bird flu outbreak in turkeys. With any luck the government will do a better job of it than they did last time, although they are slashing funds for control of the problem, which doesn't make much sense. But at least we know about it and how serious it is or it isn't. We don't have to guess or wonder or suspect. Not true for China, also experiencing an outbreak in the southern city of Guangzhou. As usual, China is controlling the news. They are also probably suppressing it:

The outbreak in Guangzhou's Panyu district is the first of the H5N1 bird flu strain since May, but it has been brought under control, the Agriculture Ministry said. The ministry's Web site said 36,130 ducks had been culled; other news reports suggested more than double that number had been killed.

"All areas which have bird flu outbreaks have to stop trade in live poultry across the board, and shut wet markets," or live animal markets, the director of the State Administration of Industry and Commerce, Zhou Bohua, said at a news conference in Beijing.

[snip]

Zhou's department is in charge of making sure that animal products from contaminated areas do not make it to market. "Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and other big cities have already abandoned wet markets and conduct regulated slaughter, transportation and selling," Zhou said, adding that "every step of the way" was being supervised. (Washington Post)

That's the official story, anyway. Since the Agriculture MInistry, the same folks who have not been sharing bird flu viruses, won't answer specific questions, one wonders. Or guesses. Or suspects.

In Guangzhou, reporters and editors were told not to cover the outbreak themselves, but to use only the version provided by the official New China News Agency. In Hong Kong, some media chafed at the restrictions.

"Alarm Bells Are Ringing," Hong Kong's Mingpao newspaper editorialized Tuesday, a day after the city suspended chilled and frozen duck imports from Guangdong.

The paper said that birds began to die in large numbers in Panyu on Sept. 5, but that it wasn't until last Wednesday that local officials told the Panyu government of the outbreak and not until Thursday that Guangdong provincial authorities learned of it.

It's easy to see the wheels turning in the minds of Chinese bureaucrats. Olympics next summer. Huge brouhaha over safety of Chinese toys and foods. Better keep quiet. Controlling and suppressing information has worked in the past. Well, for SARS, maybe it didn't work so well, but . . . Anyway, you don't expect us to learn, do you?

Memo to China's leaders: There's something called the Internet, now. You can't bottle up news as easily as you once could. And be are all wondering, guessing, suspecting that you are lying to us. We have good reasons.

Meanwhile, what to do?

A woman from the Animal Husbandry Institute at Guangdong's Academy of Agricultural Sciences who declined to give her name expressed confidence in the government. "Who else can we trust?" she said. "If you are suspicious with anything you eat here, you'd better eat nothing."

Well if you put it like that.