400,000 birds culled in N-E India

Guwahati/Malda/Shillong, Dec. 16: Nearly four lakh birds have been culled in some pockets of Assam and Meghalaya while the exercise commenced in Tuesday in West Bengal’s Malda district even as Arunachal Pradesh took all possible measures to prevent the spread of the dreaded Avian flu.
The 18-day exercise to create bird free zones was over in Assam’s Kamrup Rural and Kamrup Metro districts where close to four lakh birds had been slaughtered so far.
Culling operations were on elsewhere in the state where the bird flu had surfaced, official sources in state capital Guwahati said.
State veterinary and animal husbandry departments had targeted the number of birds to be culled at around 5,40,000, they said. Reports of unusual death of birds continued to pour in from some places. —PTI
***
Centre to set up 6 labs
By OUR CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi
Dec. 16: The Centre will set up six more laboratories, including one in Kolkata, to step up measures to check the avian influenza. The country has only one laboratory located at Bhopal for detecting the virus in samples. Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, while replying to a debate on Prevention and Control of Infectious and Contagious Diseases in Animals Bill in the Rajya Sabha, said two testing facilities will be set up in Kolkata and Jalandhar by March next year.
The bill, passed by the House on Tuesday, is aimed at providing a uniform legislation throughout the country to monitor and control infectious animal diseases.