Clean Up Time

And yet Navapur happened.

As losses mount 8212; India eats most of the chickens and eggs she produces 8212; the bird flu panic has brought the poultry industry to its knees in a week. Now, the Rs 34,000-crore industry, which employs more than a million people, is grappling to find solutions.

The industry, which hasn8217;t spoken in one voice till now the biggest player has been in denial that it is bird flu in the first place is now sending signals to the government that it must do something quick to stem the panic so that chicken and eggs reappear on the plate and the industry is back on track. But no one is the wiser is how, when, and why it happened.

Poultry Lessons

According to experts, the Indian poultry industry is 85 per cent organised in the South and West, while integration has just begun in the North and East.

As elsewhere in the world, the concern is for the unorganised sector, the small farms practising backyard poultry, where the number of birds may be small but people large, hence if there is an outbreak of bird flu, the repercussions are huge.

For instance, even after 3 lakh birds were culled in Navapur, according to Maharashtra Animal Husbandry Commissioner Bijay Kumar, who has been camping there since last Sunday, the place resembles a 8216;8216;huge septic tank8217;8217;.

Kumar claims only 30 per cent of Navapur8217;s poultry industry is organised, the rest 70 per cent is disorganised, and hence the worry. According to estimates, there are 23,000 poultry farmers in rural Maharashtra alone.

8216;8216;The key to the solution is ushering in best practices in managing the farms. For our survival, we need to constantly be on vigil, restrict free movement from farm to farm, update bio-security measures, read new data and keep in touch with the world,8217;8217; says Bharat Tandon, Chairman, Livestock Industry Association.

It8217;s a fact, admits Tandon, that the level of education is low in small family farms and poor hygienic practices in a handful could cause havoc in the entire industry.

Don8217;t make the mistake Indonesia made, warns Sashi Kapur, president, Poultry Federation of India. 8216;8216;Do not hide bird deaths. If poultry farmers notice unusually high rates of mortality 8212; in Navapur, birds were dying in huge numbers from January itself 8212; they must immediately report to authorities.8217;8217; He points out that both Thailand and China had to resort to 100 per cent vaccination after the outbreak got out of hand because they were trying to suppress information in the first few weeks.

As ornithologist and UN task force member on avian flu Dr Taej Mundkur puts it, two crucial questions need to be asked: where did it start and when did it start. 8216;8216;I am apprehensive that initially there has been so much secrecy about the poultry deaths8230;that there is a greater possibility of unintentional or intentional movement of birds from the preliminary location that would lead to new farms being affected.8217;8217;

No, that8217;s not good news for either the poultry farmer or the industry, whose survival depends on selling most of the 1.5 billion birds or 44 billion eggs it produces annually.