Wednesday, March 15 2006 14:28 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Jalgaon (Maharashtra): Culling of 70,000 birds began today(Mar15,2006) after the district administration declared four blocks in a 10-km area of the district as bird flu infected.

"The Government has identified presence of birdflu in four talukas comprising of 173 villages in a periphery of 10 km. We started the culling operations of 70,000 birds of these villages from today," District Collector Vijay Singhal told sources here.

He, however drew a difference between the birdflu situation in Navapur and Jalgaon.

"In Navapur, the majority of the birds infected were in a formally built poultry farm. Here most of the birds are backyard poultry. They have to be sought from the villages and then culled," Singhal said.

For this, the Collector will begin holding gram sabhas from today to persuade villagers to handover their birds to the animal husbandry authorities for culling.

The outbreak of bird flu was confirmed late yesterday after the Bhopal-based laboratory detected four positive samples out of the 26 sent from here.

The Collector, however, refused to commit any deadline for the completion of culling operations, saying it would be over soon.

"Here the greatest advantage is the number of birds to be culled is very less in comparison to Navapur, where the figures touched 2.5 lakh birds. Once the villagers decide to cooperate with us, the work should be over soon," Singhal said.