Govt plans a mass cull
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government is to do mass cull to control the spread of the deadly bird flu virus and has proposed that the House of Representatives set aside Rp 82.5 billion (US$8.42 million) to finance the measures as well as to compensate farmers.
"We are going to do a mass cull within a radius of three kilometers from where we find infections, and we'll do tests on animals within a 20 km radius," Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.
In the past, the government has opted to cull only visibly ill poultry and vaccinated the remainder due to limited funds.
However, recent bird flu-related deaths have raised the government's concerns over the economic and health impacts of the disease.
"We found pigs infected with bird flu in Tangerang in February and April," Anton said. The government would provide cows to affected farmers to replace the pigs, he added.
The government proposed to the House on Thursday to set aside Rp 82.5 billion from the Revised 2005 State Budget.
"We don't have enough funds to cover the operational costs to prevent bird flu from spreading," said Anton, as quoted by Dow Jones. His ministry has only Rp 52 billion in emergency funds. The total funds would be used to compensate farmers, vaccinate livestock and finance other operational costs, he added.
Anton said the government would cull 196 pigs on Sunday in Tangerang, where the country's first human deaths from bird flu were confirmed.
Indonesia received confirmation of its first bird flu deaths after tests proved that 38-year-old Iwan Siswara Rafei and his two young daughters died early this month from avian influenza, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said on Tuesday.
The government has isolated Tangerang, preventing animals from being taken out of the area, Anton said.
The farmhouses in Legok, Tangerang, and a nearby area where infected pigs were found a few months ago, are 15 km from where the deceased lived, he said.
"We don't know if these are the source of the virus. We are still investigating whether it came from poultry or pigs," Anton told The Jakarta Post. "If we consider the bird flu virus to be an airborne disease, then in theory people can only contract it if they are within three to five km, not 15 km."
Minister of Trade Mari E. Pangestu reminded people that the virus could not be contracted from consuming chicken and eggs.
"The health ministry has given an assurance that eating chicken and eggs is safe as long it is cooked in 80 degree Celsius heat for at least one minute," she said in a press conference.
She quoted reports from the Poultry Market Information Center (Pinsar) that if demand for chicken dropped by 20 percent, it could cause 2.5 million farm workers to lose their jobs.
According to the trade ministry, the country's annual chicken consumption stands at 40,000 tons, while monthly production averaged between 3,600 and 3,700 tons.
In Cirebon, the regency administration has deployed 20 personnel, including veterinarians, around the clock to monitor traffic of livestock in Losari, a small town on the border of West Java and Central Java.
Losari livestock monitoring head Djumino said veterinarians were taking blood samples from poultry and livestock. If there were any suspicious results, he added, the livestock would be quarantined before being culled.
In Medan, North Sumatra Governor T. Rizal Nurdin told regents and mayors to intensify monitoring and reporting in anticipation of bird flu cases.
The province's spokesman RE Nainggolan said the provincial administration would also vaccinate poultry in bird flu-affected areas. At present, 15,000 of 23 million quails in the province have contracted the bird flu virus.
The deadly virus has killed hundreds of millions of birds across Asia over the past two years. Humans have also contracted the virus, which has killed 57 people across Asia, including the three in Indonesia.