KARACHI: Cattle farmers told not to sell infected meat
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Nov 26: The Executive District Officer (Agriculture), Dr Mohen Lal, visited the affected dairy and cattle farmers in Landhi and asked them not to sell the meat of animals suffering from ailments after consuming poisonous feed.
He assured them that the government would compensate all the affected farmers after investigating the matter and ascertaining their losses. Talking to Dawn on Monday, Dr Lal said that cattle and dairy farmers had been told many times in the past not to use stale bread and bran in the feed of animals as the stuff could get easily infected with fungus, causing health problems in animals.
“This is nothing but negligence. Farmers have been asked not to sell meat of the affected animals, but to bury them after slaughter,” he said.
In the meantime, a team comprising disease investigation officers from the animal husbandry department, Hyderabad and the staff of veterinary diagnostic laboratory, Tando Adam, have already rushed to Landhi’s Cattle Colony.
Another medical team is expected to arrive here from Islamabad on Wednesday.
The head of Government Veterinary Hospital, Landhi, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, said that the city government had sent a bulk of medicines for the affected animals. Besides, he said, a government team was continuously attending to sick animals. However, he feared that the affected animals would have to be slaughtered eventually because of the poison attack.
About the test of poisonous feed, he said the samples would be tested at the National Diagnostic Laboratory, Islamabad and the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Karachi.
Around 300 cattle, mostly buffaloes, have died and over a thousand fallen ill after consuming poisonous feed in Cattle Colony, which is the main source of meat and milk supplies to the city. The death toll increased mainly because the local vets were unable to identify the poison in the absence of a feed testing laboratory at Cattle Colony or anywhere else in Sindh under the provincial livestock department.
