Amit Bathla
Tribune News Service
Panchkula, January 8
Though mortality among poultry birds has been taking place in Raipur Rani and Barwala since the first week of December, it took the Panchkula authorities more than a month to come across the actual reason behind the unusual deaths in Asia’s second largest poultry belt with a production capacity of 1 crore eggs per day.
Long wait for results
After the first set of samples failed to produce results, a team from the Jalandhar lab visited Barwala and Raipur Rani to collect fresh samples, which further delayed the diagnosis.
Team expresses disappointment
The district authorities swung into action only after the arrival of a team sent by the Central Government on January 7. Reportedly, the Central team has expressed disappointment over the inaction by the district authorities in tackling the situation, resulting into more deaths.
Lives of over 10,000 workers put at risk
Over 10,000 workers are employed in around 140 poultry units in the Barwala-Raipur Rani belt. Time taken by the district authorities to get familiar with the risk in poultry farms has put the lives of these workers at risk.
The Animal Husbandry and Dairying Department, which remained at the centre of operations, lived in a denial mode with repeated assurances of “no signs of bird flu”.
When the authorities finally sent the samples of birds to the Northern Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Jalandhar on January 3, the death toll had already crossed 4-lakh mark, which poultry farm owners termed ‘unprecedentedly high’ unlike previous winter seasons when mortality take place due to extreme weather conditions and Ranikhet disease.
“Earlier, we thought the deaths could be due to extreme weather conditions or E.coli, but the unusual fatality count this year raised our eyebrows,” said a worker at Nature Poultry Farm in Ganauli, which has been declared as one of the two epicentres of the disease.
Five samples collected from this farm were found positive for H5N8 strain of the virus at a Bhopal-based lab.
The unit, one of the worst-affected farms in the region, lost over 1 lakh birds in a month. Its daily fatality, which started with 50-60 on December 21, rose as high as 25,000 on December 26. Still, the authorities concerned took no cognisance of the actual reason behind deaths.
Similarly, a minimal population of livestock was left at Rajeev Poultry Farm, which had 98,000 birds on December 1.
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