Even as the State Animal Husbandry Department officials are coordinating with their Kerala counterparts to get the ban lifted on movement of poultry and poultry products from Karnataka to Kerala, industry representatives met Union Petroleum Minister M. Veerappa Moily seeking the Centre’s intervention.
Karnataka’s poultry industry was losing around Rs. 6 crore daily due to the bird flu scare and the ban, industry sources told The Hindu .
They said 10 lakh eggs and 50,000 kg chicken were going to Kerala from the Mysore region daily and the industry had taken a beating due to the ban.
Big losses
Equally anxious are private poultry farm owners in the 10-km surveillance zone around the Central Poultry Development Organisation (CPDO) where movement of poultry and poultry products was clamped on October 25 ever since the Union government notified the outbreak of the highly pathogenic influenza ‘A’ H5N1.
More than 33,000 birds in the CPDO were culled in the past week after the flu, first spotted in turkeys, spread to chickens. Hasim Assoo, a partner in Quality Poultry at Itkalpur, told The Hindu he has already suffered a loss of around Rs.7 lakh. His unit has 13,000 birds ready for the market. “It is expensive to feed the birds.”
Similar is the case of S.K. Farm near Madappanahalli which has about 10,000 birds. Its manager T. Muthaiah said they had been hit by huge losses in the last 10 days. “We sold the last batch of birds on October 20, before the ban.”
Blood samples
Many farmers are awaiting the results of the blood samples drawn from their birds though they are confident they will test negative. “Samples were taken on October 30 and we are yet to hear from them. All of us are confident the results will be negative as they have been no unusual bird deaths,” said Anand of Galiappa Farm in Dibbur.
