Mumbai: Refuting media reports that the Collector of Nandurbar district in Maharashtra had issued Venkateshwara Hatcheries a notice pertaining to its alleged supply of chicks with the H5N1 virus, the company released a statement with clarifications.

The company has clarified that it had not received any showcause notice from the District Magistrate, Nandurbar. "It's unfair to link our supply of chicks with the alleged confirmation of Ranikhet disease in a sample collected from Navapur by a Bhopal-based laboratory," the release said.

As per the release, poultry farms in Navapur are not the company's franchisees. Stating that Venkateshwara Hatcheries is not the only supplier of chicks to Navapur-based poultry farms, the release mentions other suppliers of chicks and poultry feed.

Further, the company always ensures that the chicks supplied by them are high-quality ones, "free from any vertically transmitted disease."

Referring to a letter written by the Chairperson of the National Egg Co-ordination Committee to the Prime Minister and Agriculture Minister, requesting them to take fresh samples for tests to get a second opinion, the release said: "This proves the bona-fides of the company. If our chicks had been infected, they could not have survived beyond the first week. Please note that the company supplied most of the livestock about 72 to 100 weeks before the reported dates of mortality."

The release further said that the Disease Investigation Department of the Animal Husbandry Department, Maharashtra had collected samples from the Diamond Poultry farm, Navapur on February 10 and certified that the birds had tested positive for Ranikhet disease on February 16.

Certifying for the quality of poultry supplied, the company said officers of the Pune-based Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory regularly monitored the health status of breeding stocks by collecting blood samples and testing them in their lab.

Conflicting reports

Nobody in Maharashtra knows for sure how many chickens are culled daily to ward off the bird flu virus. Secretary, Animal Husbandry Department, Uttamrao Khobragade, said on Monday that 80 per cent of the total 8.5-lakh birds in 46 poultry farms had been killed and 1.25-lakh chickens would be killed on Tuesday. Besides this, 18,000 chickens in `backyard poultry farms,' which were not infected, would, still, be culled as a precautionary measure.

But on Tuesday, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said that the figure of 8.5 lakh to 9 lakh chickens was the total chicken population in the poultry farms in Navapur.

He told reporters after a Cabinet meeting that 94,000 birds had been culled till Monday and 50,000 more would meet with the same fate on Tuesday.

But Mr. Deshmukh had earlier said that there were 55 farms in Nandurbar, of which 35 were found empty.

The remaining 20 farms had 1.3-lakh birds. His statements are inconsistent and the figures cited do not tally with those shown by the official.

With several poultry farm owners claiming to have culled chickens themselves, Mr. Deshmukh said that the district authorities were seizing records from the former to ascertain whether their stock had been killed, spirited away to some secret location or sold off.

While Mr. Deshmukh was addressing the press conference, Dr. Vijay Kumar, Animal Husbandry Commissioner, said in Navapur that 80,000 birds would be killed on Tuesday.

He claimed that 73,627 chickens and 1.13-lakh chicks had been culled on Monday.

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