Poultry industry demands Rs 300 cr package for revival

Pune, Mar 22 (UNI) The Maharashtra Poultry Farmers Welfare Association has demanded a Rs 300 crore package for the revival of the bird flu scare hit poultry industry.

Association secretary Dr Dinesh Kulkarni told a press conference here today that barring Navapur and Jalgaon, poultry farmers elsewhere in the State have received no assistance from the State government.

The association proposes to meet State Finance Minister Jayant Patil on March 24 and submit their demands to him. The association has threatened to launch a ''rasta roko'' agitation at Nashik next month if their demands are not met.

Dr Kulkarni claimed that the bird flu scare had affected the poultry industry so severely that the poultry owners did not have the finance even to feed their existing birds.

The association has also suggested that apart from the Bhopal laboratory, another animal diseases testing laboratory should be set up in the country so as to allow a second opinion to be obtained.

The bird flu scare has inflicted losses to the tune of over Rs 7,000 crore to the poultry industry till now, he claimed while adding that the industry is continuing to suffer a loss of Rs 200 crore every day.

The National Egg Coordination Committee (NECC), meanwhile, has reiterated its demand that every suspected bird flu case should be thoroughly investigated by a team of three or four experts before confirming any incidence of bird flu. It is better to have a panel of experts deciding on the issue. In the present case, the opinion of only laboratory has been taken into account and it has led to huge losses to the industry and the farmers, the committee has recommended.

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