Chicken sales dip in Bengaluru amid bird flu scare, mutton sale up

The National Institute of High Security Animal diseases (NIHSAD) in Bhopal confirmed the outbreak in Dasarahalli area.

With bird flu or H5N1 influenza confirmed in Bengaluru last week, the sale of chicken meat has dipped in the city.

Bengaluru's civic agency officials had ordered for the culling of chickens after a confirmed case of bird flu, came to light on January 1.

"The sale of mutton has gone up. Sale of chicken has gone down by at least 25 percent," news agency ANI quoted a meat-seller, Aslam, as saying.

The National Institute of High-Security Animal diseases (NIHSAD) in Bhopal confirmed the outbreak in Dasarahalli area. An official release said birds in some poultry farms in the area started dying in December last year, triggering panic of avian bird flu, following which the area was quarantined and culling of birds was carried out.

BBMP officials are also scrutinising stalls in wholesale meat markets across the city. Officials are now in the process of tracing where the chickens were bought from. The government, meanwhile, has issued a notification declaring an area of one-kilometre radius from the chicken centre at Bhuvaneshwari Nagar in Dasarahalli as an infected zone and an area of 10 km radius as surveillance zone. Bengaluru last reported cases of bird flu in October 2012.

OneIndia News