The Dhaka Times Desk The poultry market of Bangladesh is gradually being taken over by India. The businessmen concerned with this have requested the intervention of the concerned ministry of the government.
Related sources said that entrepreneurs were looking for ways to export chicken from Bangladesh only three years ago. They also found market for halal meat in some countries including Malaysia, Indonesia. But in just three years the poultry market of Bangladesh is now import dependent. Not a day goes by without eggs and chickens coming from India. An influential section of the government joined with the conspiracies of some multinational companies has brought this industry, which has been built gradually for two decades at the cost of thousands of crores, to the brink of destruction. Not only eggs and chickens are coming from India, but the disastrous bird flu is coming!
The government opened the import of these two products before the month of Ramadan due to the excessive increase in the price of eggs and chicken. Even before the way to import children from abroad was opened. But the government did not allow the import of bird flu vaccine despite strong demands of the entrepreneurs day after day. According to the traders concerned, half of the eight lakh farms in the country have been closed as a result of the government's one after another anti-people decisions. Indian traders have taken over the lost market. Concerned persons complain that the government has taken one anti-national decision after another to give this opportunity to Indians.
Talking to the people concerned, it is known that millions of pieces of eggs and chickens are coming to Bangladesh every day from Tripura, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand states of India affected by bird flu. A class of Indian traders are smuggling these cheaply bought chickens and eggs to Bangladesh under a controversial government circular. With all those eggs and chicks comes the deadly highly pathogenic avian influenza virus. Through this, Bangladesh's potential poultry industry is facing destruction.
The leaders of the Breeders Association of Bangladesh said that due to the widespread spread of bird flu in six states of the bordering country of India, panic has spread in the country's farmers, hatcheries and breeder farms. They said that the domestic poultry industry is already in a fragile state due to the extensive damage caused by bird flu last year, and they said that if birds and eggs infected with bird flu come again through legal or illegal routes across the borders of neighboring countries, it will bring disaster to the domestic poultry industry.
Referring to the World Organization of Animal Health (OIE) report, Moshiur Rahman, convener of the Poultry National Coordinating Committee and president of the Breeders Association, told reporters that in January this year, highly pathogenic avian influenza H was reported in the neighboring countries of Tripura, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand in India. -5N-1 virus spread widely. Apart from this, in Assam last July and West Bengal in August, many chickens and eggs were destroyed due to the virus infection. He said, "Earlier we noticed that the farmers in the affected areas along the border have sold chickens and eggs at very low prices. A class of traders smuggled these cheaply bought chickens and eggs to Bangladesh.
Shamsul Arefin Khaled Anjan, the vice president of the association, said that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has identified a total of six countries, including India, as countries affected by avian influenza. It will take at least 10 years or more for these countries to be free from avian influenza. For this, he demanded a complete ban on the import of one-day-old babies, chickens, eggs and hatching eggs from these countries for at least the next 10 years.
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