NEW DELHI: The Railways on Monday withdrew the order prohibiting serving of chicken and eggs from its static and mobile catering units. The ban was imposed last week following the outbreak of bird flu in parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Quoting the World Health Organisation guidelines, an official statement issued by the Railways here said it was safe to consume properly cooked poultry meat and that conventional cooking at a temperature of 70 degrees C inactivated H5N1 virus.

The departmental staff and the staff of licensees of all static and mobile catering units, besides the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation had been instructed to follow the WHO guidelines strictly. Half-boiled eggs, fried eggs, omelette and roasted chicken would not be served, the statement said.

Hoax calls

Even as efforts are on to restrict the spread of avian influenza, some calls received by the control rooms here have proved to be hoax .

"We appeal to the people not to make such mischievous calls as it takes a lot of time and effort to investigate each complaint received at the control room," Upma Chowdhry, joint secretary, Department of Animal Husbandry, told reporters here on Monday.

Citing an instance, she said the control room, which operates round-the-clock, received a call last week claiming 2,000 bird deaths in a district in Orissa. The control room began its laid down drill and informed the State Chief Secretary, as the officials concerned could not be contacted. The Chief Secretary immediately asked an officer to contact the Delhi control room, which took details of the call. The district administration was alerted. However, enquiries showed that the call was hoax.

Two similar calls were received about Haryana, Ms. Chowdhry said. No complaint received at the control room was ignored and verification involved a lot of effort.

She said culling operations had been completed in the extended zone in Gujarat. A total of 1,06,000 birds were killed. In Maharashtra, 2,89,771 birds, including backyard poultry, were culled and 13,00,000 eggs destroyed.

On the tests carried out at the High Security Animal Diseases Laboratory in Bhopal, she said about 4,000 samples had been tested so far, 516 last week itself. Fifteen samples tested positive for H5N1 virus. The samples from Tinsukia district of Assam were sent for testing.

Vineet Chawdhry, joint secretary, Health Ministry, said the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry was awaiting the results of 11 human samples sent to the National Institute of Communicable Diseases on or after February 22. Of these, four were from Gujarat and seven from Maharashtra. The Institute received 31 human samples, of which 20 tested negative. Reporting and testing of samples was an ongoing process for better monitoring of the situation.

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