Mass cull unfeasible: Minister
Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The World Bank offer to finance a mass cull of poultry here in a bid to halt the bird flu outbreak and reduce the number of human infections, has yet to get a positive response from the government.
Instead, Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono said the government might not need to perform a mass cull, "because it is not an effective way of rooting out the avian influenza virus."
"It is not true that a mass cull is the only way to prevent the (bird flu) outbreak. Our method in fighting the virus is on the right track and we only need to expand the scale," Anton stated on Friday before attending a Cabinet meeting.
He explained that a mass cull would cause serious social unrest, since the government could not provide sufficient compensation for poultry farmers, who would lose profits.
"Many households in Indonesia have chickens that roam around the house freely. The social impact would be too huge to bear. A mass cull is only effective in newly affected areas, not in areas where it has already become endemic," divulged Anton, who attended a bird flu conference in Geneva earlier this week.
His ministry concedes that thoroughly destroying all birds within a three-kilometer radius of an affected area is the best way to combat the virus. However, even that selective type of cull has never been implemented effectively because the ministry considers it to be "too expensive", preferring instead to pay for vaccines for the animals.
Apparently responding to the government's reasoning that it does not have enough money to compensate farmers, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz offered President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono last Saturday financial aid for a mass cull.
Scientists warn that continued contact between infected birds and humans may eventually result in the mutation of the virus, sparking a deadly, worldwide flu pandemic, which, according to the World Health Organization, could kill millions of people.
In Indonesia alone, five people have been confirmed as bird flu fatalities over the past 10 months.
At the Geneva conference, the agriculture ministry had said that it would need approximately US$130 million over the next two years to fight the outbreak, with only about $20 million allocated from the state budget next year.
During the conference, the United States, Germany and Japan have also pledged to grant at least $10 million to Indonesia in a bid to encourage this government to beef up efforts to contain the outbreak.
Anton emphasized that Indonesia had refused to seek overseas financing in the form of loans, because the outbreak was an international issue and the virus had not originated here.
"We are not reluctant to seek overseas financial aid. But we don't want the aid to be in the form of a debt, as it will burden us in the future. Bird flu is a global issue and we want countries to give us grant money to contain it," he asserted.
Anton added that the available funding was deemed sufficient to locate new cases of bird flu, sterilize infected areas with disinfectant and conduct a selective cull, as well as to empower regional husbandry agencies to impede the virus.
The virus has killed at least 64 people in eastern Asia since the end of 2003 and was detected in eastern Europe last month.