Bird flu: veterinary teams to be deployed along Kerala border

November 27, 2014 08:19 am | Updated 08:19 am IST - COIMBATORE:

The Tamil Nadu Animal Husbandry Department will deploy veterinarians on all check-posts in the routes leading to Kerala to prevent the entry of birds from the neighbouring State, where more than 17,000 ducks died recently due to an outbreak of bird flu.

Veterinarians manning check-posts, which will be functional round-the-clock, will spray disinfectants on all vehicles coming from Kerala.

An official, who took part in the meeting, held to discuss the issue told The Hindu that check-posts will be established as early on Thursday on all the seven routes that connect Coimbatore to Kerala.

Revenue Department officials would also be deployed to complement the efforts of the Animal Husbandry Department officials.

The district administration has also constituted 20 rapid response teams to tackle any outbreak of bird flu epidemic. As many as 700 bird culling kits have also been kept on the standby to deal with any contingency, the official said.

Further, Animal Husbandry Department veterinarians would also undertake daily inspections of private poultry farms, which have been instructed to implement bio-security measures to prevent the transmission of bird flu.

The measures decided include restricting the entry of vehicles and personnel of other poultries, preventing stagnation of water and roosting of other birds near the farms, besides providing quality bird feed.

The veterinarians attending to private poultries have been issued instructions to alert the Government to any mass death of birds, which could indicate the outbreak of bird flu.

As per the latest Government census, Coimbatore district had around 1,500 poultry farmers rearing nearly one crore commercial and broiler chickens.

District Collector Archana Patnaik chaired the meeting held on Wednesday to review the measures to prevent the transmission of bird flu across the border.

Those who took part in the meeting included V. Muthugopalakrishnan, Regional Joint Director, Animal Husbandry Department, veterinarians working for the Government and those working in private poultry farms, besides poultry farmers.

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