Geoff's points echo ones I have made here before.
The bird trade has always been cruel and now it clearly carries potentially catastrophic dangers - does the Government really want us to follow on from being the world epicentre of SARS to being the world epicentre of an H5N1 outbreak? The way to avoid any risk of that is to close bird shops not to close Mai Po.
I'm sure most people in Hong Kong actually expect the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society to be actively and firmly opposed to the continued existence of the bird trade here and elsewhere in China in any way shape or form; that's what we should be doing, and a lot more forcefully and vociferously than we seem to be at the moment.
Mike Turnbull
