53,000 poultry birds to be culled at two farms in Mohali

Chandigarh, January 21

Around 53,000 birds of two poultry farms in Punjab’s Mohali are to be culled after some samples from there tested positive for avian flu, a senior official said on Thursday.

The reports of samples taken from two poultry farms at Behra village in Dera Bassi in Mohali were received from the National Institute of High-Security Animal Diseases lab in Bhopal on Wednesday.

“The culling of around 53,000 birds will either start today evening or tomorrow,” said VK Janjua, Additional Chief Secretary (Animal Husbandry and Dairy).

As per the Government of India guidelines, the birds of poultry farms located within one km of an infected farm have to be culled.

There was no other poultry farm other than these two within one km radius, an official said.

The department has constituted 25 teams for the culling drive, he added.

After culling, the poultry birds would be buried, he said.

The samples taken from two poultry farms had tested positive for H5N8 strain on Wednesday.

The samples from these poultry farms were sent to NIHSAD for confirmation on January 15 after the Northern Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory (NRDDL) in Jalandhar suspected them to be positive for bird flu.

These two poultry farms are layer farms where birds are reared for eggs.

Punjab had sounded an alert earlier this month after bird flu cases were reported from several states and Union territories in north India, including Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi. — PTI