Even as poultry farmers located within five km of bird flu-hit Chingmeirong farm are coming to terms with their loss after a week of culling, farmers outside the danger zone are facing the prospect of losing healthy birds to starvation due to the ban on movement of poultry feed and closure of poultry markets. The Northeast poultry industry is estimated to be worth around Rs 1,000 crore.Due to the outbreak of avian flu, the inflow of poultry products and feed from Siliguri via Assam and Nagaland has come to grinding halt. A situation that has Mohendro and Ambala Khuraijam extremely worried. One of the big poultry farmers in the state, the couple run M A Poultry Farm with a rolling chicken count of 6,000, and they say they have feed stock for only another week. “How are we going to feed the chicken if the Government doesn’t allow feed to come into the state? All our feed comes from outside and we need between 200-300 kg of feed everyday. If deprived of food, the chicken will start devouring each other. It’ll be a total loss,” says Ambala, a veterinarian who changed professions a decade ago when the Khuraijams entered the poultry business. Culling, it seems, would have been more remunerative although the government is giving only Rs 30 as compensation per full grown broiler chicken.This prevailing situation outside the five-km radius, where no culling took place, prompted around 250 poultry farmers like the Khuraijams to come together and form the All Manipur Poultry Farmers and Traders Association, which was hastily brought into being on July 30. The Association wants the Government to understand its plight and are submitting a memorandum to Governor Dr S S Sidhu urging that culling be completed at the earliest and the region declared free of bird flu so that the markets can start functioning again. Mohendro has also gone in for substantial loans from banks for enhancing the farm capacity. “We have a total capacity of 12,000 chicken now and have taken loans of over Rs 30 lakh. I have written to the banks apprising them of my situation.” A major client of M A Poultry are the battalions of Indian Army and paramilitary forces deployed in Manipur and Mohendro says his farm alone supplies 10,000-11,000 kg per month of chicken to them. “Following this bird flu outbreak, they may not buy chicken for upto three months, but we’ll have to keep feeding the birds.” Feed usually comes in 70-kg bags costing Rs 1,100 each. Although the Centre has issued an advisory to the Northeastern states asking them not to impose restrictions on inter-state movement of poultry products, that is yet to be implemented. “This is our only source of income. We may lose the loan, our chicken, everything if the markets don’t reopen,” says Ambala. Although Veterinary and Animal Husbandry director Th Dorendra Singh had indicated on Wednesday that feed movement outside the five-km radius zone should be allowed, the restrictions are still in force.
