There is no outbreak of any poultry disease in Region Six. This is according to Chief Executive Officer (ag) of the Guyana Livestock Development Authority (GLDA), Dr. Dwight Walrond.
Dr. Walrond, referring to reports published in the Guyana Times Newspaper dated Wednesday, June 29, 2016, titled, “Farmer loses over 800 chickens in Berbice”, told the Government Information Agency (GINA), that GLDA officers in the region visited the location and met with the farmer. “We haven’t received any other reports, so this you can say is an isolated case” Dr. Walrond said.
According to Dr. Walrond, the GLDA has a team on the ground collecting epidemiological information and samples that would help shed light on what is happening at the particular farm. “We need to look into it, but we won’t stop there, we need to look at the entire chain, we look at the feed, the entire batch. We need to know where the chickens came from so we will look at the signs and symptoms and then we are going to take it from there,” he said, adding, “Internally, there would have to be an investigation to look at the channel of information to determine if there were any lapses in the communication process.”
Meanwhile Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, George Jervis, under whose purview the GLDA falls, refuted claims attributed to the farmer in the article.
“I can say categorically that no farmer came to nor spoke with me with reference to this matter nor did they speak to my staff here. This is largely borne out by the fact that what is there (in Guyana Times) is totally inaccurate because we have one of the better labs in the Caribbean which was commissioned in 2014 at a cost in excess of US$3M.”
Noting that the lab is capable of carrying out multiple tests on poultry, Jarvis said that in the event that the test cannot be properly carried out at the lab, the Ministry of Agriculture is obligated to send samples to a number of laboratories. “There is no way a farmer could have issues as reported in this newspaper and could have come to our office and we say we have no equipment to test because the purposes of this IDB funded veterinary laboratory is to do exactly what this farmer needs to have done,” Jervis explained.
