The office made such decision as vet officials have been facing intense opposition from poultry farmers and locals who are against culling of chickens.Though veterinary technicians have culled hundreds of thousands of chickens at poultry farms, they have been facing hassles from the farmers to destroy local chickens.
Officials at DoAH complained that vet technicians were even assaulted by poultry farmers in some places. [break]
"We have been facing lot of obstacles from the beginning. So we have decided to use social channels to persuade the farmers," said Dr Pradeep Chandra Bhattarai, an official at DoAH. Poultry farmers have been complaining about meager compensation provided by the government. He said that the office will seek help of local leaders of political parties, representatives of social organizations, local administration and civil society members to convince the poultry farmers. "We cannot spend whole day to convince poultry farmer to kill a few chickens. So we decided to choose the social channel," he added.
According to Dr Bhattarai, all the chickens of the district must be destroyed as per government directive. After declaring Bhaktapur a bird flu crisis zone, the government imposed a ban on the sales of chicken in the district for three months.
Meanwhile, the DoAH said that the strain of H5N1 virus has been confirmed in two poultry farms in Kathmandu on Sunday. The office said that vet technicians have been deployed to cull chickens of the farms. The rapid response teams culled over 1.4 million chickens in the Valley in the last one and half month. The office said that 1.7 million eggs, 95,506 kg chicken feed and 847 kg chicken meat have been destroyed during the period.
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