The outbreak of bird flu in Telangana has sent shock waves across the poultry industry. The Animal Husbandry Department has zeroed in on 18 villages, in a radius of 10-km, around the infected poultry farm, as a surveillance zone.

Culling begins The government has decided to destroy all the birds in the infected zone of 3 km and close all the poultry shops in a radius of 10 km.

The poultry industry, however, puts the number higher. “If they are going to cull birds in such a huge area, it is going to be 10 lakh birds,” a source in the industry told BusinessLine.

The industry, which suffered heavily when the virus hit the country some seven years ago, is worried how this news would pan out.

“It is quite common for us to experience bird losses in the summer. The infection happened only in one farm with only 35,000 birds. Compare this with about eight crore birds the State has,” Mohan Reddy, President of the Hyderabad Layer Farmers’ Association, told BusinessLine.

The State produces about 3 crore eggs a day, supplying to different parts of the country.

“We are advising our members to be cautious and take preventive measures. We have asked them to take bio-security measures to ward off straying animals into the farms that can cause the infection to enter and spread,” he said.

The Government, however, is also insisting that the impact will be minimal as it could locate the problem in time and that only one firm is infected with the virus.

Preventive measures “The high-security animal lab at Bhopal had tested five out of the 10 samples from the Torroor poultry farm as positive to the virus. The birds are egg-laying birds and not broilers. This would mean minimal spread of the virus,” D Venkateswarlu, Director of Animal Husbandry Department, said.

But a consignment of one or two truck loads of eggs must have been despatched from the infected farm.

“We are in the process of tracing the despatches. We are also probing from where the virus had sneaked in,” the official said.

Individual members of the association, however, are worried.

“The word will spread fast and could lead to fall in demand,” a poultry farmer said.

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