PESHAWAR, Feb 5: NWFP Minister for Agriculture, Livestock and Cooperatives Department Engineer Hisamuddin Bangash has said that there was no immediate threat of bird flu outbreak in the province, adding that because of the constant surveillance activities the situation was under control.

Presiding over a high level meeting, the minister cautioned all the district livestock officers to be more active and send compulsory reports on bird flu situation of their respective areas failing which they would be dealt with severely.

He said that he department started the process of enlisting the commercial poultry farms to asses their bio-security and bio-safety measures however, majority of the farms were not registered and didn’t follow the safety measures.

Mr Bangash added that on the directives of NWFP chief minister the department had provided Rs100,000 to each district to train the workers of poultry farms on bio-safety and bio-security measures.

The meeting was also attended by Livestock and Dairy Development director and Agriculture Department additional secretary.

The Livestock and Dairy Development director apprised the minister of the steps taken by the department, saying that regular meetings of the provincial and district task force on avian influenza were held wherein representatives of Health, Livestock, Wildlife and District Government reviewed the progress in their respective areas and updated reports were sent to NWFP chief secretary.

He said that field staff had completed vaccination to the poultry birds in the outbreak prone areas while samples were regularly collected for those farms for detection of any virus.

The minister expressed satisfaction over the steps taken by the department. However, he asked the director to ensure availability of bird flu vaccines and personal protection equipment in ample quantity for the staff to deal with any emergency situation.

Our correspondent from Mardan adds: The Livestock Department took samples from 350 out of 700 poultry farms in the district and sent them to Karachi for laboratory test of bird flu virus, officials said here on Tuesday.

The samples were taken as a precautionary measure to contain any possible outbreak of bird flu in the district, they said, adding that so far no case of the disease had been detected in the poultry farms.

The officials warned the owners of poultry farms to keep a vigilant eye and they inform the department concerned in case of any symptoms of the virus in the chickens.

Poultry Farms Association president Hazrat Said held a meeting with the District Coordination Officer Mubashir Hassan, and informed him that no case of bird flu had been detected in Mardan. He urged the DCO that the authorities should ban import of chickens into the district from the Punjab province.