Two P'kla farms infected, 1.6 lakh birds to be culled

Anti-viral drugs for farm staff

“The employees of these poultry farms will be examined by the health department and will be administrated anti-viral drugs,” JP Dalal, Animal Husbandry Minister

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 8

Haryana’s Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Minister JP Dalal has said that over 1.66 lakh birds of five poultry farms in Panchkula district would be culled after poultry samples from two farms tested positive for avian flu.

Talking to reporters here, Dalal said the culling operations had started following the Central Government guidelines stipulating that poultry in farms located within one km of any farm found with infected birds would have to be culled. “The employees of these poultry farms would also be examined by the health department and would be administrated anti-viral drugs,” Dalal asserted.

He said the Haryana Government had declared the area within the radius of 1 km from the two poultry farms as “infected zone” and the area up to 10 km as “surveillance zone”.

The state government has restricted the movement of poultry from these areas. Adhering to the guidelines, 1,66,128 birds of the five poultry farms will be culled under the supervision of experts to prevent the spread of the disease. Three of these farms are within 1-km radius of the two infected farms. The farm owners will be given compensation.

The minister said five poultry samples of the Siddharth Poultry Farm, Raipur Rani (Panchkula), were found positive for the H5N8 strain of avian flu, while some samples from the Nature Poultry Farm at Panchkula had also tested positive.

The samples were sent to a laboratory in Bhopal. Recently, over 4 lakh birds had died at farms in Panchkula’s Barwala-Raipur Rani area, which is one of the largest poultry belts in the country with 70-80 lakh birds in over 100 farms.