Chicken flu has been rife in southern China for a long time now. Guangdong province which borders Hong Kong SAR has always seemed to be the point at which it has started. Ditto with SARS.

A few weeks ago the Chinese government carried out a lot of culls, not just in Guangdong but also in provinces further north including the Shanghai municipality.

Both open farms and battery farms had their chickens killed. It is not just the types of farmers that spread the disease in China but also the cleansiness of animal wholesale markets. If you have never been to one then dont put it down on your list of things to do in China.

They are filthy, stinking areas where there is almost no regard for hygene. The treatment of the animals (both domesticated and always very many varieties of wild animals) would in most western countries mean that they were shut down and people prosecuted. That does not happen in China.

The farms themselves are little better. Farming here bares no resemblance to a country farm in the west. In China many of the farmers and their families live alongside the animals in little more than adobe huts with little or no sanitation. Hence the spread of avain flu in China is much easier.

Unless the WHO clamps down on China and other countries in the Far East then avian flu and ohter animal diseases will continue to be transmitted worldwide.

One Chinese Minsister objected to WHO intervention saying that the West was trying to limit China's growth.