The Centre’s directive to cull birds in West Bengal bordering states like Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar has not gone down well as authorities of these states objected culling operation saying that there was no trace of bird flu virus.
The culling operation in mostly affected districts of West Bengal has been completed with culling of about 32 lakh chickens. Despite that, the Centre under precautionary measures waned to create a free poultry zone and hence it made an endeavour to starting culling process in other states especially the neighbouring districts of West Bengal.
Earlier on Friday night by issuing a notification the Union agriculture ministry had directed Orissa, Assam, Bihar and Jharkhand government to cull birds within a radius of 5 km in districts bordering avian influenza-affected West Bengal. But the state administrations have shown their unwillingness to cull healthy chickens.
Poultry farmers in Orissa are in stiff opposition to this as they argue that why should they cull birds when there is no evidence of deadly H5N1 virus?
Meanwhile, the Assam government has ordered to cull around 50,000 birds in Kokrajhar and Dhubri district as precautionary measures though there was no trace of the deadly virus.
Need of a combine effort
No doubt the country is battling hard to halt the spread of bird flu virus to others parts of the country. The present effort of culling in various states can only be seen as a desperate attempt but non-cooperation from state authorities can create a huge problem in future if the virus spreads to other regions of country. Hence there is a strong need of a calculated and combined effort from both Center and States.
Government should first send veterinary doctors to rural parts of every district to collect blood samples of chickens and then take the decission of culling. Apart from that there should be a proper compensation process so that people can come forward with no objection. If authority provides proper compensation to poultry farmers then there would be no question of any kind of objection from locals to cull their birds.
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