Chicken deaths in Malda raise flu fears

With a fortnight after bird flu outbreak was reported in the Murshidabad, unnatural deaths of over 700 chicken died at the National Poultry Farm, a government-owned poultry in Malda, have raised questions about the government's sincerity to deal with the epidemic.

The samples have been sent to the testing laboratory at the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory, Bhopal.

Anisur Rahaman, animal resources minister of West Bengal told Business Standard, "Some birds have died in a government-owned poultry at Malda. The samples have been sent to Bhopal for testing." On Tuesday 145 chicken died in the poultry at Malda.

This is for the first time, since the outbreak of bird flu in January, that a large number of birds have died in an organised farm. All the earlier cases of bird flu were reported from backyard poultry. In January, the H5N1 virus had affected 13 districts of West Bengal.

More than 3.4 million birds were culled during the last outbreak, which the World Health Organization (WHO) described as the worst-ever in India.

Even though smuggled poultry from Bangladesh is being suspected as the cause of fresh bird flu outbreak, few concrete steps have been taken to stem the flow of chickens from Bangladesh.