August 7, 2025

 

Foreign companies are buying or taking lease of the farms that were shut down following the outbreak of bird flu. Some of them are using the licences of closed farms, they said.

 

A large number of local skilled farmers are now jobless, they added.

 

Already, around 27 %  of the total share of poultry farms is being captured by the multinational companies, said Bangladesh Poultry Industries Association (BPIA) Joint Secretary General Khandokar Mohsin.

 

Mohsin also feared that if the situation continues unabated, nearly 50% share will go to the foreign hands within three to four years.

 

Seguna, Tata, Godrej from India, New Hope from China and Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group of Thailand are doing poultry business with CP being the largest supplier of broiler chickens and eggs in the country.

 

Nearly 47% of the poultry farms were closed during the last one and a half years due to spread of the avian influenza virus.

 

The number of farms has been reduced to 60,824 from 114,763 during the period, according to a study by Bangladesh Poultry Khamar Rakkha Jatiya Parishad in July.

 

Losing poultry producers have no ability to restart the business because of financial crisis, said Kazi Farms chairman and former President of Bangladesh Breeders Association Kazi Jahidul Hasan.

 

The government is not taking proper measures to rescue the industry from ruination but allowing import and business of the multinational companies.

 

The country's largest farm owner also said that following the involvement of foreign traders the local breeding farms are at a great risk now.

 

He said small poultry farmers are usually buying baby chicks from the local breeders but the alien farm owners are not collecting those products from the local traders. "They purchase the poultry products from big foreign farms".

 

There are more than 100 breeding farms in the country now and if the situation continues, the number will be reduced to 10 or 15 in coming days, said the experienced farm owner.

 

He said the capacity of local poultry farms had been enough to fulfil the requirement of country's chicken-based protein. "In absence of government's responsive policy for the industry, we are now depending on import," he lamented.

 

He said the present poultry import policy will fully smash the once income generating sector of the village people. "The authorities are not giving necessary financial support and compensation to the closed farms to restart their business but promoting import of the products".

 

The authority should introduce a poultry friendly policy and at the same time they should not allow the multinational companies to do business, he said.

 

He also stressed the need for introducing vaccine to eradicate bird flu from the country.
The BPIA Joint Secretary General said Bangladesh is one of the five critical bird flu-affected countries in the world, which is yet to introduce vaccine to prevent the disease.

 

But other most risky countries like India, Vietnam, China and Egypt have introduced vaccines to prevent the disease, he added.

 

"The government needs to help the affected farms with compensation and vaccines in an effort to prevent avian influenza from causing heavy damage to the key industry," he added.

 

The poultry producers claimed that the livestock department is rather helping the disease to linger to achieve their vested interest.

 

They claimed that for getting grants from the donors, the authority is not taking proper steps to prevent the virus and hiding the exact number of culling in the poultry farms for not giving compensation to the closed farms.

 

Bahanur Rahman, Professor, Department of Microbiology and Hygiene of Bangladesh Agriculture University, said to prevent the disease, the authority should introduce vaccine immediately.

 

They can, at least experimentally, start the vaccination of the poultry birds, he stressed.

 

"We have the ability to develop the vaccine as there are capable scientists in the country," said the microbiologist adding if the government gives us proper infrastructure, we will be able to make the medicine within a short time.

 

"But I have no idea why the government is not giving permission to invent the vaccine," he added.

 

He also mentioned that they made a proposal to the government to formulate bird flu vaccine in 2007 when the disease was first detected in the country.

 

If the government had given permission at that time, we would have been able to develop the vaccine by this time, said Mr Rahman.

 

Before the Avian influenza attack in 2007, the total investment in the country's poultry sector was estimated at nearly ৳120 billion (US$ 1.75 billion) where some 3.5 million people are employed directly, the industry insiders said.

-        The Financial Express