Hong Kong Suspends Poultry Imports from French and Polish Zones

Hong Kong's Centre for Food Safety ordered on May 18, 2026 the suspension of imports of poultry meat and products from affected zones of France and Poland, after receiving notification of avian disease outbreaks by health authorities of both European countries. The measure adds to the suspension applied months earlier to zones of the United States, within the same standard protocol of automatic response to animal biosecurity notifications in exporting countries.

That Hong Kong has had to apply the same suspension measure to three distinct countries—the United States, France and Poland—within a few months illustrates the magnitude of the challenge facing a highly diversified market in its sources of poultry imports: the more distinct sources supplying the same product, the greater the probability that in any given year at least one of them will report an outbreak requiring a temporary suspension.

For TAAG, the repetition of this type of suspension in different exporting countries during the same year confirms that diversification of poultry meat suppliers, while reducing the risk of shortage in the event of a specific incident, also multiplies the number of sources that a biosecurity surveillance system must monitor simultaneously, reinforcing the value of routine microbiological monitoring at the destination as an additional control layer independent of the origin of each import.