By IANS
Bhubaneswar : Orissa’s move to cull poultry birds in villages bordering the avian flu-hit West Bengal ran into trouble with poultry farmers and government officials openly opposing it.
An association of state poultry farmers has filed a writ petition in the Orissa High Court challenging the government’s decision to start culling.
The state government had announced Tuesday that it would cull nearly a million poultry birds up to five km from its border with West Bengal. The birds would be slaughtered in about 750 villages in the state’s Mayurbhanj and Balasore districts.
However, the state Fisheries and Animal Resource Development Department, which has been opposing the move, was reluctant to carry out the order.
The department did not issue orders to the concerned district administration for culling. “We are ready to start culling and we are waiting for the order which will be sent by the Fisheries and Animal Resource Development Department,” an officer in the district administration at Balasore said.
Balasore is the district bordering West Bengal where the majority of birds would be slaughtered.
Opposition to the government move came to the fore when the minister of the department Golak Bihari Naik Wednesday wrote to chief minister Naveen Patnaik requesting him to reconsider the government’s decision.
“Why should the government kill healthy birds when the results of the tests conducted on blood samples of poultry birds in the state were found negative?” Naik told IANS.
The secretary of the Fisheries and Animal Resource Development Department Hurshikesh Panda went on leave Thursday for five days. Sources close to him said Panda was against culling of birds and he went on leave to “express his unhappiness with the government’s decision”.