The State government will soon bring in legislation to ensure the quality of cattle and poultry feed sold in the State, with punitive provisions to bring to book those found responsible for bringing adulterated feed into the market, Animal Husbandry Minister J. Chinchurani said in the Assembly recently.
Replying to a submission on the recent death of cattle in the State following the consumption of contaminated feed, she said that to date, 657 heads of cattle across the State had taken seriously ill following the consumption of adulterated cattle feed sold by KS Feeds. In Kottayam alone, 245 cattle had been affected. In all, eight cows had been reported dead in the State due to feed contamination.
Compensation
Ms. Chinchurani said that farmers who had insured cows will get a new cow to replace the one lost, while for others, the department could only give INR 15000 from the contingency fund as compensation.
She said a police case had been registered regarding the feed contamination and that follow-up investigations — postmortem examination of the cows, analysis of samples collected by the veterinary surgeon, and samples of feed sent to the Chemical Analysis Lab — were on.
The government was yet to receive the laboratory test results and as soon as the results were available, follow-up measures, including stringent action against those responsible for feed contamination, would be taken up, the Minister said.
Source: The Hindu
