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Even in India, the Government continued to wish away the
disease till it became clear that it couldn’t hide
the information any more. Moreover, illegal
transportation of 600,000 poultry from
"sealed" Navapur due to political and police
complicity to Jalgaon has now brought the disease
there. While India continued to outsource the
detection and reporting mechanism to a Mumbai-based
NGO, it has only one center at Bhopal to test for the
virus. These facilities being inadequate and outdated
can confirm or deny cases only after 10 days. Food
Minister Sharad Pawar promised that the test lab will
get modern equipment from France 5 weeks ago but that
does not seem to have come through.
In the meanwhile, the poultry industry claims it is
losing USD 60-70 million a day and is claiming a host
of benefits including minimum support price,
subsidized insurance, loan write-off, etc. Since most
of the poultry businesses are owned by politicians and
politically connected individuals, they seem to be
getting their way. Pawar announced a one-time waiver
of 4% off interest for poultry businesses in the
affected areas. Pawar claims that the impact on the
budget will be low as the waiver is restricted to the
two affected districts.
While many poultry businesses are publicly traded, their
profits are often hidden by wholly owned subsidiaries
and the figures are not transparent. Hence, it is not
clear how much they really contribute to the economy
by way of taxes. The industry has also been actively
campaigning about the safety of chicken by employing
actors, cricketers, and politicians to eat chicken in
public to motivate the population to not give up on
chicken. Maharashtra-based poultry businesses have
contracted Marathi actors to campaign for them.
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