Ghanaian poultry and livestock farmers have called on the government to consider putting modalities in place to adequately compensate farmers should any farm be destroyed on detection of any disease.
This is because the venture is capital intensive, as a 20 kilo of wheat bran alone costs 20,000 cedis ($2)and so "we would not accept any meager compensation offered us," said Ellis Aferi, chairman of the Livestock and Farmers Association. He said he was surprised that for the two years that the outbreak of the H5Ni Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) had been prominent globally, the ministry of agriculture and the veterinary services had not thought of the plight of the farmers should the disease break out in Ghana.
Asked why he entertained that fear, Aferi said some years ago when swine fever was detected on some farms, the affected farmers were not adequately compensated and this placed them in financial difficulties."The swine fever incident which was not properly addressed is still fresh in our minds, so this time round if something similar happens again we will not cooperate with the authorities," he warned.
Aferi blamed the Veterinary Services Department for not supplying poultry farmers with vaccines for the past four months. He said it was about time the ministry of agriculture procured modern equipment to detect viruses among the birds, rather than to rely on foreign countries to do so.
Accra Mail
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