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Stone laid for lab

BHUBANESWAR: Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar on Sunday laid the foundation for International Laboratory for Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) for animals at Argul on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar and the Centre would be a foremost institute in whole SAARC countries.

To be built at an estimated cost of Rs. 45 crores, the international laboratory is expected to help strengthen regional capabilities and competitiveness in achieving excellence in FMD diagnostic capabilities at a faster pace.

Mr. Pawar pointed out that although FMD was not a very much killer disease, it could cause direct economic losses to the livestock growers by adversely affecting performance of the animals and such losses has been estimated to the tune of Rs. 20000 crores. Since India managed to reduce incidence of the disease under FMD-Control Programme launched during X Plan, it became important to test the efficacy of such a programme in neighbouring SAARC countries owing to trans-boundary nature of the disease, he said.

The Centre would also produce trained manpower in the region in the field of FMD diagnosis, surveillance and epidemiology as well as help in establishing FMD laboratories in the member countries, the Union Minister said.

“Unless we make sincere efforts to contain and manage this disease, we will be far away from achieving the targeted production of 160-170 million tonnes of milk by 2020 ,” Mr. Pawar said.

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