CAN DO

Troubled waters

While the opponents and proponents of the project trade arguments, the people in the trenches are looking down the wrong end of the barrel. There are more than 140 fishing villages spread over the six coastal districts likely to be affected. More than one million fisherfolk live along this stretch, with hundreds of fish-landing stations.

A number of fisherfolk have lost their nets to the dredging vessels. Fisherfolk who accidentally ventured close to a dredging vessel or protested have been targeted by the navy. In areas where dredging hasn't yet begun, there are fears that fisherfolk will be removed from the coast and their lands acquired. "Regular movement of ships through the canal will hamper fishing. Already our boats, equipment and nets are damaged by ships coming into the Tuticorin harbour, says Jesu Balan, a fisherman from Anna Colony, Tuticorin. "There are a total of about 200,000 fisherfolk and ancillary workers in 33 villages in Tuticorin district. Almost all of them are opposed to the project," says M Krishnamurthy of the Democratic Fishers and Fishworkers Union, an ngo based in Tuticorin.

There are several concerns. I earn about Rs 40 per 3-5 hour trip. The fish will be there so long as corals are there. If the corals go, so will the fish," says Krishnammal K of Vivekanandpuram, a fishing village. She is convinced this project will destroy the corals. A few months ago, several villages in Tuticorin submitted a memorandum against the project.

The situation in Nagapattinam district is worse. N Nagaraja, a fisherman from Kameshwaram village, hasn't been out fishing for several days. The reason: his fishing net has been damaged. "Two months ago, I lost about 20 kg of net worth more than Rs 10,000," he rues. Then, on January 13, 2006, he again lost nets worth twice the amount. Fisherfolk cast their nets and then wait for hours. If the nets are in the path of a dredging ship, they get shredded. And then there is the cost of each fishing trip, which is in thousands of rupees.

The traditional fishing panchayat of the village reported the matter to the district authorities and the fishing department. No compensation has been paid. "The vessel usually dredges far from where we spread our nets. But we can't move away even if we see it. The nets move around with ocean currents. It is on its way to the dumping site that the ship approaches our nets. We don't get the time to save them," explains Nagaraja. And all this mostly happens at night, the usual time of fishing. Fisherfolk in Rameshwaram talk of resorting to extremist solutions.

More than 1,500 fisherfolk protested in August 2005 at Arakattuthurai in Nagapattinam. They wanted to block the dredging vessel with 77 boats. "Heavy police and navy presence prevented that," says Rethinam. "Navy personnel noted the boat numbers. These were later targeted," says Samikkanu.

sscl maintains no fisherfolk will be displaced. They say only when future land-based developments happen will any land be acquired. Activists and fisherfolk rubbish this claim, saying that hundreds of thousands of fisherfolk will lose their livelihoods. It also has to do with their fishing practices. They go out on fishing trips -- called thangal -- for three days and two nights. They spread their nets and wait for the catch. "Once the canal becomes operational this will become virtually impossible due to the movement of ships," says Rethinam. As the nets keep moving with currents they are bound to get caught in the path of an oncoming ship and get destroyed. " sscl's plans of warning fisherfolk are useless and will in no way help fishing," says Fernandes. In one good thangal, fisherfolk can earn as much as Rs 10,000. "These days, due to the fear of losing nets, we are forced to fish closer to the coast. In one trip we can barely earn Rs 2,000," says Kumar.

But surprisingly almost all fisherfolk are convinced that this project will never actually get finished. "They are wasting time and money. Such a canal will never actually work. All the mud will keep coming back. Till when can they keep dredging? They are pouring money down the drain," says Kamaraj. And they are not alone is thinking the project might not work. 12jav.net12jav.net

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Quick, quixotic

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Who flew?

From all accounts, the central government was fully equipped to deal with the possibility of an outbreak of avian influenza. The systems for surveillance and monitoring were supposed to be in place. Events in the first two months of the year proved otherwise.

On February 18, the Indian government officially declared that avian flu had hit Navapur taluka of Nandurbar district in Maharashtra, after the country's topmost animal diseases lab -- the Bhopal-based High Security Animal Diseases Laboratory (hsadl) -- confirmed that the h5n1 virus was found in samples collected from birds that died in large numbers. Navapur has 52 poultry farms housing more than 14 lakh egg-laying birds. The government apparatus had moved into the area two days before, as the authorities suspected that the disease that caused the large-scale deaths was avian influenza. To control the disease, the state government ordered the immediate culling of the rest of the birds in the locality. The Gujarat government took similar steps in Uchchal taluka of Surat district, bordering Navapur, even though no mysterious death was reported there. According to who, India is one among 13 countries in three continents that reported the first outbreaks of the disease since the beginning of February.

But the February date is misleading. It now appears that deaths from bird flu in the congested poultry district began much earlier -- in the middle of January. The government told the World Organisation of Animal Health (oie) that the outbreak could be dated to January 27, but poultry farmers in Navapur -- most of them refuse to believe the disease is bird flu -- that the spate of bird deaths began around January 15.

The authorities are blaming poultry-owners for not informing them about the epidemic. An estimated 55,000 chickens died in a single farm before the authorities were taken into confidence. Nandurbar collector Jayant Gaikwad told Down To Earth (dte) that he has sent show-cause notices to poultry farms in the area asking them why hadn't reported the high fowl mortality immediately. Venkateshwara Hatcheries (vh) was also indicted because as one of the largest suppliers of chickens, feed and vaccines it had not alerted the authorities. vh chairperson Anuradha Desai, also president of the National Egg Coordination Committee, argued that the poultry deaths were caused by a virulent form of the common Ranikhet disease, which does not affect humans.

The poultry industry, spearheaded by vh, said it had tested samples of dead birds and found the 'Ranikhet' virus, not h5n1, supported by test report No/ dis/p.d.d.l /35/532-35/2006 from the state government's Pune-based Western Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory's dated February 16, for samples collected from Diamond Poultry Farm on February 10-11. The report said: The characteristic lesions in dead embryos for Ranikhet disease has been observed and confirmed. In sharp contrast, hsadl in its report submitted to the central department of animal husbandry and dairying on February 18, confirmed the presence of h5n1 virus in eight of the 12 samples sent to it on February 10 from Navapur. It is on the basis of hsadl 's report that state animal husbandry minister Haji Anees Majeed Ahmed declared a bird flu outbreak on February 18. But vh and the poultry farm owners in Navapur don't accept hsadl's report. "There is no bird flu in Navapur. Hasty declaration by the government is only going to bring bad name to the Indian poultry farmers and the country itself. Almost every year due to weather change fowl suffer from Ranikhet disease and die. The same happened this year when from January 15 fowl in Diamond Poultry Farm started dying and within a few days mortality figures touched 55,000 out of the total 70,000 birds in that farm. Tests conducted on dead fowls prove it is Ranikhet disease and not bird flu, " says Ahmed Pathan, owner of Pathan Poultry Farm, which till February 20 housed over 22,000 layer-hens. All of them have been culled.

For obvious reasons the poultry industry is in denial, including vh. "Almost 95 per cent of the poultry industry in Navapur is in the hands of vh, which is the sole supplier of chickens to farmers here. It also supplies medicines, vaccines, poultry feed, etc. Fowl are dying on a large scale since the beginning of February. But what set the alarm bells ringing was the discovery of about 700-800 dead fowl in gunny bags thrown amid bushes about 7 km away from Navapur town in Sawret village on national highway 6 on February 7. We immediately complained to the police station and the mamlatdar . A police case was filed and a doctor from vh was called to collect samples and test them. Later, when we asked the doctor, he claimed it was Ranikhet disease. But we are local people and know that it cannot kill so many birds in such a short time. In three days over 55,000 birds died in Diamond Poultry Farm. We are sure that vh has lied to the people and the government and tried to suppress information and evidence on bird flu," alleges Aijaz K Sheikh, a local politician who has been tracking bird deaths since early 2005.

This is especially dangerous because the impoverished poultry workers in Navapur have been handling dead birds without protective gear. Their malnourished status and close contact with infected birds can enhance their risk of infection.

More dangerous than the poultry industry's cover-up is the problem of the resistance to tracking domestic fowl in surrounding villages. Assessing the danger there is even more problematic. Fear of the government's belated clean-up measures has reached such levels that when a dte correspondent tried talking to some villagers who had a few country chickens, they refused to acknowledge ownership. "We neither rear fowls nor eat them," is a common refrain in Navapur.

The government has not helped set the confusion at rest. With too many contradictory statements doing rounds, Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on February 21 issued a gag order against his own officers directing them not to talk to media about avian influenza. He has made Bhushan Gagarani, head of the directorate-general of information and public relations, the sole official spokesperson on the bird flu outbreak. Then, at a press conference on February 20 at Nandurbar, Deshmukh differed with his animal husbandry minister on whether bird blood samples have been sent to a London laboratory for retesting, denying his minister's media briefings. The gag order did not help explain why despite the surveillance system set up by the government, it did not know that 55,000 birds had died by early February.

Debates about systems can go just so far, but the question is whether the measures initiated can help contain the disease in human terms. M P Yadav, director of the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (ivri), Rae Bareli, who was one of the experts who confirmed avian flu, says: "Some birds have gone and nobody knows where they have gone. This is a subject of investigation." Another expert, virologist T Jacob John, sounds an alarm. There is so much of the virus in the environment that several people will be infected, he says. We don't yet know how long the h5n1 virus can lie dormant, before showing up. Besides, since action was delayed the virus could have travelled to other places through eggs and egg trays, experts say.

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Overkill

Global meat production has increased more than five-fold since the 1950s, and 'factory farming' is the fastest growing method of animal production worldwide, says Danielle Nierenberg, a researcher with the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute, in a 2003 paper. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (fao), Asia has the fastest developing livestock sector, which includes poultry.

Since the avian flu outbreak began in south-east Asia in mid-2003, public health officials, farmers, veterinarians, government officials, and the media have referred to the disease as a natural disaster, implying that it was impossible to prevent. But this highly virulent form of avian flu did not just happen. It was turned into an epidemic by industrial animal production is spreading around the world, swallowing up small farms and indigenous animal breeds. This mode of production led to adverse genetic changes, a smaller gene pool, because of which the immunity level of poultry has gone down. In modern-day poultry farms, chickens are often crammed in small coops and cages, or long sheds that can house thousands of birds. As a result, outbreaks of infections can easily spread. Such rearing methods weaken the birds' natural immune system, making them highly susceptible to diseases.

To solve this problem, intensive farming methods use high doses of antibiotics in chicken feed, and growth hormones are used to increase the speed of the chickens' growth. In the us, livestock consume eight times more antibiotics by volume than humans do, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit organisation. It estimates that between 1985 and 2000, the amount of anti-microbial drugs used non-therapeutically on American livestock rose by 50 per cent. On a per-bird basis, anti-microbial use by poultry producers has risen three times since the 1980s. In addition to losing their potency in fighting animal diseases, their repeated use is seriously undermining our toolbox of human medicines, says Nierenberg.

There are virtually no regulations governing these products. For example, no residue studies are required. Such rampant and unnecessary use of antibiotics has resulted in the spawning of numerous antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains. In 1992, a study of the Escherichia coli bacteria isolated from human and animal populations of north India found that a high number of multi-resistant strains was prevalent in both human (37.7 per cent) and animal (25.5 per cent) bacterial populations. In another study conducted in Tamil Nadu on the antibiotic-resistant Vibrio cholerae bacteria, scientists found that bacterial strains isolated from environmental and seafood samples had high resistance to commonly used antibiotics such as oxytetracyclin, streptomycin and tetracyclin. Even more alarming was the fact that poultry animals like chicken can produce antibiotic-resistant bacteria rapidly. In the mid-1970s, scientists from the Massachusetts-based Tufts University found that when chicken were fed with tetracycline-mixed fodder, they began excreting tetracycline-resistant E coli bacteria after 24 to 36 hours.

The use of the growth-promoting hormones may also affect the birds. "Growth promoters affect immunity and the effect of vaccines by diverting energy. Energy that could have been used for enhancing immunity levels is diverted for growth promotion," says G C Ram, a scientist with ivri . Furthermore, any ingredient that affects protein synthesis may also affect the effectiveness of the vaccine given to contain the outbreak, adds Yadav.

In the Indian poultry industry too, rampant use of antimicrobial drugs and vaccines are the order of the day. "The basic issue with the Indian poultry industry is that of low immunity which has been caused due to over-medication and vaccination. For instance, the same vaccines and antibiotics have been given to poultry over the past few decades. This has lead to pathogens developing immunity to those vaccines. In such a situation higher doses of medication are not going to work," says Rupesh Bhosale of Nicholas Piramal India Ltd, Anand, Gujarat. Shabir Ahmad Khan, vice president of the Poultry Federation of India agrees. "In the sixties, the birds were given just three vaccines. Today a layer bird gets 16 to 17 vaccines during its first 18-20 weeks of life," he says. Similarly, to ensure that a broiler lives long enough to reach the dining table (that is an age of 6-7 weeks) it is given five to six vaccines.

And this is exactly what poultry farmers in Navapur are doing, or have been advised by companies that produce vaccines and hormones they should. "A bird starts laying eggs from about the age of 17-18 weeks and till then we keep vaccinating it," explains Pathan. On being questioned about the efficacy of such intensive vaccination and medication, Pathan cites the example of the polio vaccine that he claimed needs to be given well in time if one wants protection. There is no point in administering a vaccine after the virus has struck, he adds.

Despite this overkill of drugs in the poultry industry, there are no standards in India for antimicrobial content in chicken or eggs consumed. But, several other advanced countries appear to be cautious when it comes to antimicrobial content when the bird reaches the platter. While the European Union has completely banned the use of antibiotics in animals and animal products from January 1, 2006, Australia and the us already have several stringent regulations to control it (see table:Out of line).

The lack of standards should not come as a surprise, given the fact that some big poultry industry players have a lucrative trade in selling home-made vaccines and hormones, and the smaller players want them for faster and more risk-free turnover ('Fowl play', Down To Earth, November 30, 2005).

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Losing game

Medication goes hand-in-hand with mechanisation. But the latter not only increases the vulnerability of the poultry stock, it also robs jobs and marginalises the unorganised rural backyard sector.

Though many experts agree that it is the intensive methods used in industrial poultry farming that is largely responsible for epidemics like avian flu, household or backyard poultry is suffering the most in the aftermath of the flu outbreak. This is because of the blanket culling the authorities have resorted to in Nandurbar. Though experts say that backyard fowl are less vulnerable because they are not crammed into small spaces and their more diverse genetic pool makes them more resistant, international agencies like who, fao and oie urge Asian governments to promote factory farming and clamp down on open markets where consumers can buy live poultry and fresh meat. This is on the grounds that confinement, as in western countries, offers better biosecurity and greater control over the disease can be achieved.

In Navapur, however, the 52 big farms have not been able to drive out a substantial network of backyard poultry. Almost all households in Navapur taluka rear hens in their backyard. Though most residents refuse to stake claim over these hens in the aftermath of the epidemic, on being questioned they admit that chicken and eggs are an integral part of their diet. "We are poor people working as daily wagers in poultry farms and earn Rs 30 a day. I have three desi hens and a few chickens in my backyard. We do not sell hens, but consume their eggs regularly. Once in a while, we also sell eggs in the local market, says Meeta Prakash Rathod of Khakraphali village, on the outskirts of Navapur. She used to work at Palawal poultry farm till it was closed down. She also adds that none of her hens are affected and they rarely fall ill because " desi hens and known to be stronger than poultry farm fowls".

But the avian flu outbreak has been bad news for backyard poultry. The Navapur nagarpalika has been authorised to conduct house-to-house culling of birds. The Maharashtra government on February 22 claimed to have culled all household fowl within a radius of 10 km of Navapur. Neither the government nor international organisations seem to be alive to the fact that backyard poultry is crucial to the rural economy, providing livelihoods and nutrition.

That indiscriminate culling, experts say, may not be a good idea is a point some poultry-owners also admit. Though Pathan owns a poultry farm, he vouches for the health of backyard poultry. "Since desi chicken are kept in the open and are free to move around, they have a higher chance of adapting to weather changes. For instance, if they are out in the sun and feel the heat, they are free to move and come under shade. Hence they can adapt themselves as per the local weather conditions. But that is the not case with fowls in large poultry farms where there is less genetic diversity and where they are all housed in restricted enclosures. Hence diseases like the Ranikhet disease afflict poultry farm birds more," he explains.

Women are predominantly responsible for the daily management of the poultry. They are also frequently owners and decision-makers. "From my experience in development, we have a big challenge in providing something concrete to poor women. But we do not see many options when it comes come to practical implementation. But poultry is certainly one possibility: the role of poultry is not only for profit, but as much an activity for poor women to start from," Frands Dolberg, a professor at the University of Aarhus, in Denmark, told dte in an email interview. Poultry development adds to the gender toolbox and has much to do with entitlements and capabilities, he added. Dolberg has studied small-scale poultry projects in India and Bangladesh extensively for decades.

Bangladesh, for instance, has a very robust small-scale poultry sector, which supports more than 1.7 million women. The socio-economic impact studies conducted on these projects, financially supported by organisations like the World Food Programme and Danish International Development Agency, show remarkable improvement in the financial and health status of women in particular and people in general. For instance, poor families are now able to eat three meals rather than two or one meal during lean seasons. Consumption of eggs and chicken obviously made a big difference in their nutritional status, says Dolberg in a study entitled 'Review of Household Poultry Production with Focus on Bangladesh and India'.

"Chicken is an important source of nutrition. Usually 25 grammes of animal protein are required per person per day. But in India, people get only 10 grammes per person per day on an average, and in this poultry plays a very important role," says ivri's Yadav.

Unlike beef or pork, chicken does not have a religious taboo and the prices of chicken are usually lower than those of mutton, which makes it a good choice in poor people's diet. "Birds grown in natural habitat have more trace nutrients than chickens grown for commercial purposes. Poultry is a good source of nutrient for a common person as it cheap and easily available," says Suresh Babu, senior scientist with the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad.

Moreover, many Indian families have begun to accept eggs as a regular supplemental part of their vegetarian diet. fao 's forecast surveys indicate that both the acceptability and demand for eggs and chicken in the next couple of decades is likely to increase rapidly.

The Worldwatch Institute says meat consumption is rising fastest not in the us and Europe, but in the developing world, where the average person in 2005 consumed nearly 30 kg a year, as compared to about 10 kg in 1960. From the early 1970s to the mid-1990s, meat consumption in developing countries grew by 70 million tonnes, almost triple the rise in industrialised world.

No immunity
But things could change. It was just a matter of time till avian flu reached India after the ravages effected in east and south-east Asia and recently the fringes of Europe. The government had plenty of time to put in place a surveillance regime and a system to contain it. It claims it did exactly that, but Nandurbar has exposed the frailties of the system. Not only did it take a month to respond to the first outbreak of the epidemic, it also failed to mount both earlier and during the crisis an awareness campaign. That failure lay behind the reluctance of poultry-owners to come forward and report the deaths and later the slapdash unhygienic way in which exposed workers went about clearing up the poultry farms. Public health was clearly the biggest casualty.

Nidhi Jamwal in Nandurbar with T V Jayan, Ritu Gupta and Padmaparna Ghosh in New Delhi 12jav.net12jav.net