[Pil-pc-oceania] Fwd: Checkmate for chook farmers

Thu Feb 14 19:06:34 EST 2008

More fowl play, this time in West Bengal ... chancellors of the  
chequebook churn out cheap chooks for China while locals lose  
livelihoods.  Forward from GRAIN www.grain.org

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Robyn Williamson
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Begin forwarded message:

> New from GRAIN
> http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=554
> February 2007
> A new report by GRAIN - "Bird flu in eastern India: another  
> senseless slaughter"
>
> The carnage of poultry, in which 3.7 million birds were culled, in  
> the eastern Indian state of West Bengal is a striking testament to  
> the failure of the global response to the bird flu crisis. In a  
> flash, one of the world's most dynamic areas of poultry farming has  
> been practically ruined, a priceless stock of biodiversity wiped  
> out, and the livelihoods of millions of poor families pushed to the  
> brink. This has been caused not so much by bird flu as by the  
> response to it.
>
> Available online here:
> http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=35
> (PDF) http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=35&pdf
>
> Full text of this "Against the grain" available below.
>
> =================================================
>
> BIRD FLU IN EASTERN INDIA: ANOTHER SENSELESS SLAUGHTER
>
> by GRAIN
>
> The carnage of poultry in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal  
> (abutting Bangladesh's western border) is a striking testament to  
> the failure of the global response to the bird flu crisis. Years  
> have now gone by since the H5N1 strain of the disease emerged, and  
> yet today in West Bengal we see that things have not moved from  
> square one.
>
> In a flash, one of the world's most dynamic areas of poultry  
> farming has been practically ruined, a priceless stock of  
> biodiversity wiped out, and the livelihoods of millions of poor  
> families pushed to the brink. This has been caused not so much by  
> bird flu as by the response to it. Three weeks after bird flu was  
> officially confirmed on 15 January 2008, when massive culling  
> operations were launched, the death toll stood at a shocking 3.7  
> million birds.
>
> More is yet to come. The central government has now issued a  
> directive to neighbouring states to cull all poultry in a 5-km-wide  
> belt surrounding West Bengal. Those affected by this "pre-emptive"  
> cull are understandably outraged. Poultry farmers in Orissa, one  
> such neighbouring state, are taking their protests to the streets  
> and to the state's High Court. They say that the culls will destroy  
> their livelihoods and the area's rich poultry diversity. They also  
> point out that such culls will only encourage an influx of smuggled  
> poultry imports from elsewhere.
>
> There was heavy resistance to the culls in West Bengal too. During  
> the first wave of culls, when it may have been possible to contain  
> the disease, poultry owners refused to participate because of low  
> compensation rates and, most disturbingly, because some local  
> officials were taking a big cut of the compensation. A few culling  
> teams even stopped work to protest against pressure from local  
> officials to sign false cull certificates to boost their  
> compensation claims. Reports also came in of culling teams leaving  
> sacks of birds to rot in fields and unprotected villagers gathering  
> near to or even participating in the cullings, putting into  
> question the merits of culling as a means of safeguarding human  
> health. The situation appears to be even worse in neighbouring  
> Bangladesh, where, despite a mass culling campaign, bird flu has  
> spread to more than half of the country's 64 districts since March  
> 2007.
>
> The response to bird flu in West Bengal needs to be seen for what  
> it is: a political decision to safeguard the interests of the big  
> poultry producers at the expense of the small-scale sector. In  
> India as a whole, thanks to heavy government support, poultry  
> production has been growing at a rate of nearly 20% per year, with  
> most of the growth occurring through the expansion of large-scale  
> integrated production, largely for export and largely in the midst  
> of areas with thriving backyard and small-scale poultry producers.  
> The situation is no different in West Bengal, where a number of big  
> integrated poultry firms have set up in recent years. The largest,  
> Arambagh Hatcheries, part of the B.K. Roy agribusiness group, is  
> now an important player in major export markets, such as Japan and  
> the Middle East, and politically very well connected at home. To  
> keep its trade lines open, a company like Arambagh cannot operate  
> where bird flu is present -- hence the drive to stamp the disease  
> out by a mass cull. This is a reality of corporate poultry farming  
> that all communities need to be aware of: if a big poultry company  
> sets up in or near to your community, when a disease like bird flu  
> breaks out, whether or not your birds are affected, they will be  
> culled and your traditional poultry practices may even be outlawed.  
> The culls in West Bengal have now been followed by a 3-month ban on  
> small-scale poultry production.
>
> If there's one thing that people in West Bengal can be sure of, it  
> is that bird flu will strike again, if it ever leaves. The virus,  
> like many other diseases, is entrenched in the poultry industry in  
> Asia. Thailand and Indonesia now know this, as do China and  
> Vietnam. India, faced with its third bout of bird flu in two years,  
> should also now understand. Bird flu cannot be completely  
> eradicated: it has to be managed.
>
> Paradoxically, the key to effective management of bird flu lies  
> with the very small-scale poultry systems that have been so  
> devastated by the responses to the disease so far. The great  
> advantages of these traditional systems when it comes to bird flu  
> are that they are small-scale and local -- serving mainly local  
> markets and utilising local breeds and feeds. All this keeps the  
> disease contained and at low levels. In these circumstances, highly  
> pathogenic diseases like bird flu, in the rare cases where they  
> enter smallholdings, tend to burn themselves out quickly. Disease  
> can, of course, still be a problem, but, with some minimal support,  
> farmers can easily handle it, as has been shown with another  
> poultry killer -- New Castle Disease (Ranikhet).
>
> Unfortunately, in West Bengal, as in most places around the world,  
> governments provide virtually no support to this sector, dismissing  
> it as "backyard" and not worthy of the tremendous support provided  
> to the poultry companies, even though these small-scale systems  
> have served the food needs of rural and urban markets for  
> generations. Instead, the goal of almost all poultry development  
> programmes worldwide is to scale-up small poultry holdings and push  
> the farmers into using high-yielding varieties and costly feeds  
> supplied by big poultry companies. It should not go unnoticed that  
> the outbreak of bird flu in West Bengal began in a big state-run  
> hatchery. And this is typical of other outbreaks. Bird flu only  
> shifts from an isolated incident to a major outbreak once it gets  
> into a large farm, where it rapidly amplifies and spreads through  
> the many channels emanating from it -- the sale of eggs, chicks or  
> spent layers, the trade in live birds, the dumping of waste, the  
> movement of workers or even the aerial dispersal of the virus.
>
> Yet in West Bengal, while the backyard sector was being crushed,  
> the big farms, even those in affected districts, were given special  
> treatment. During the ban on the sale and movement of poultry in  
> Kolkata (Calcutta), the state capital, which was later extended to  
> the entire state, the 12 largest poultry companies had exclusive  
> permission to continue supplying city markets and luxury hotels if  
> they could show that they adhered to "biosafety" norms. Such norms,  
> however, have not kept bird flu out of the big poultry farms in  
> West Bengal, nor did they in the western state of Maharashtra  
> during the 2006 outbreak, nor now in Bangladesh, where the disease  
> is currently racing through the larger farms. Instead, in West  
> Bengal there is reason for concern that outbreaks in these bigger  
> farms may not be properly reported. A year ago, when news spread of  
> an unusual die-off in a farm owned by Arambagh Hatcheries, the  
> company denied access to inspectors, with the apparent blessing of  
> the Animal Resources Development Minister, who told reporters,  
> "Nobody can walk into a hatchery without prior permission".  
> Contrast this with the West Bengal government's current  
> mobilisation of a police squad to carry out search-and-destroy  
> missions for backyard poultry in poor villages.
>
> The official response to bird flu in West Bengal was very short- 
> sighted. Other options could have been pursued, with a more nuanced  
> approach, reflecting the importance and context of small-scale  
> poultry in the state. The ban on the movement of poultry could have  
> been followed by focused surveillance and education, combined with  
> targeted culls at infected farms, and vaccination, especially in  
> the early days of the outbreaks. This would also have helped to  
> build long-term defences against future outbreaks. It might not  
> have satisfied the big poultry companies, because the low-level  
> persistence of the disease would keep export markets closed, but it  
> would have safeguarded the interests of the millions in West Bengal  
> whose livelihoods and food supply depend on small-scale poultry  
> production.
>
> One month before the outbreaks in West Bengal, these issues were on  
> the table at a major international conference on bird flu in New  
> Delhi. Yet, throughout the outbreaks in West Bengal, the  
> international community and its UN agencies have hardly been  
> visible. The US and Japan did meet with state officials, but only  
> to check on their export supplies and, in the case of the US, to  
> offer some technical support and equipment and to verify the global  
> availability of stocks of Tamiflu syrup for children. Once again,  
> the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was silent about  
> the irreparable loss of diversity that the cull would entail and  
> the alternatives to indiscriminate culls that have been  
> successfully deployed in other countries. The message raised at the  
> conference in Delhi by some within the FAO ranks, about the need to  
> consider the social impacts of responses and the importance of  
> "targeted" culls, was quickly forgotten. Not that such matters are  
> high on the agenda of the international community anyway, judging  
> from the disturbing inability to resolve international disputes  
> over the sharing of virus samples and vaccines. The row that flared  
> up in February 2007 over patenting issues -- between the powerful  
> pharmaceutical interests, led by the US and the UK, and the poor  
> countries most vulnerable to bird flu, led by Indonesia -- has yet  
> to be resolved. The nasty politics even surfaced during the West  
> Bengal outbreaks, when Indian officials accused Bangladesh of not  
> sharing their bird flu virus samples.
>
> Sadly, with not nearly enough being done to address the deeper  
> structural issues at the root of the global bird flu crisis, the  
> story in West Bengal will be repeated where and when the disease  
> strikes next.
>
> =================================================
>
> REFERENCES
>
> R. Ramachandran, "Caught Unawares", Frontline, Vol. 25, No. 3, 2-15  
> February 2008: http://www.hinduonnet.com
> Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay, "Avian epidemic", Frontline, Vol. 25,  
> No. 3, 2-15 February 2008: http://www.hinduonnet.com
> Kounteya Sinha, "Bengal pays for not paying dues", Times of India,  
> 18 January 2008, http://tinyurl.com/3468as
> Subir Bhaumik, "Bird flu cull hit by 'corruption'", BBC News, 29  
> January 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7214854.stm
> "People in West Bengal cry foul over compensation for birds'  
> culling", Asian News International, 22 January 2008, http:// 
> tinyurl.com/36fuqb
> Dilip Bisoi, "Orissa in a fix as move to cull birds lands in legal  
> tangle", Financial Express, 11 February 2008, http://tinyurl.com/ 
> 34ckvl
> "Bird flu in N 24 Parganas, organised poultry also hit", Express  
> News Service, 30 January 2008: http://www.expressindia.com
> "Bird flu: West Bengal misses hidden poultry", Sify News, 4  
> February 2008: http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14599392
> "'No poultry ban in Kolkata' but none to be found in markets",  
> Express India, 31 January 2008: http://www.expressindia.com
> "Fears allayed in flu cry", The Telegraph (Calcutta), 22 February  
> 2006: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060222/asp/calcutta/ 
> story_5876730.asp
> "Avian flu fear, 45 km from outbreak site" The Telegraph  
> (Calcutta), 19 January 2008: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080119/ 
> jsp/siliguri/story_8799764.jsp
> "US offers help to contain bird flu outbreak in WB", Times of  
> India, 28 January 2008, http://tinyurl.com/37lu4q
> Anni McLeod, FAO, "Mitigating social and economic impacts:  
> Livestock sector perspective", International Ministerial Conference  
> on Avian and Pandemic Influenza, New Delhi, India, 4-6 December  
> 2007: http://www.fao.org/avianflu/en/
>
> GOING FUTHER
>
> Government of India, "Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Plan":   
> http://mohfw.nic.in/Influenza%20Pandemic%20Preparedness%20Plan.pdf
> GRAIN, "Viral times - the politics of emerging global animal  
> diseases", January 2008: http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=532
> GRAIN, "Germ warfare - livestock disease, public health and the  
> military-industrial complex", January 2008: http://www.grain.org/ 
> seedling/?id=533
> GRAIN, "The top-down global response to bird flu", http:// 
> www.grain.org/articles/?id=12
> GRAIN, "Fowl play: the poultry industry's central role in the bird  
> flu crisis", February 2006: http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=194
> GRAIN, "Bird flu resource page", http://www.grain.org/m/?id=84
>
> =================================================
>
> GRAIN, Bird flu in eastern India: another senseless slaughter,  
> "Against the grain", February 2007, http://www.grain.org/articles/? 
> id=35
>
> ===========================================================
> 13 February 2008
> ===========================================================
>