Tamil Nadu   

Eggs pile up at godowns

NAMAKKAL: Facing yet another bout of serious crisis in just three years, the farmers in Namakkal Zone, country’s major poultry producer, are very much apprehensive about eggs piling up at their farms’ backyards.

Major importers such as Dubai, Kuwait and Oman have immediately re-imposed the ban on poultry from India after the outbreak of avian influenza in West Bengal.

And a highly sanitised Namakkal Zone, situated some 1,000 km away from the epicentre of the present outbreak in West Bengal, is the major sufferer despite having healthy and robust birds, which show no symptoms of any viral attack till date.

Almost all the consignments of eggs and meat that left Namakkal Poultry Zone, a week back, are being detained at various ports and destinations following the ban.

For no fault of ours, we suffer, says a poultry owner in Namakkal. Nearly 4 crore eggs are piling up at the godowns of 750 farms in the zone, which produces an average 2.5 crore egg units a day. Of which 70 lakh eggs go to Kerala every day.

The export, as eggs and powder, accounts for about 55 lakh units a day. Local market consumes the rest.

Its poor shelf-life of 40 days worries the farmers most. Unless the containers at various ports are lifted on time, we will incur heavy losses, says a leading exporter.

A conservative estimate is that the export from Namakkal has slumped by 25 per cent in three days.

The meat in-take has recorded a 20 per cent fall. The big players, however, are expected to wither the blues while the small and medium farmers face a bleak future.

During the outbreak three years ago too, several countries had banned poultry from India.

The poultry industry revived the orders after the World Health Organisation declared India free of bird flu.

The Namakkal zone of the National Egg Co-ordination Committee (NECC), which is the body to fix the egg price, has slashed it from Rs. 1.60 to Rs. 1.20 a unit to stem over the crisis.

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