All check posts along the borders with Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala have been alerted not to let any cattle in from those states. All Deputy Commissioners across the State have banned cattle or sheep fairs. And government officials are watching the skies, hoping the rain will stop.
The dreaded foot-and-mouth (F&M) disease has spread to 17,482 cows and buffaloes and killed 2,182 in 1,368 villages of seven South Karnataka districts. It does not affect humans or the milk produced by the cattle. But the panic among the dairy farmers is so high that opposition leader in the legislative assembly, H D Kumaraswamy, has announced a padayatra on October 16 to draw the attention of the Siddaramaiah government. Many ministers are camped in Mysore for the Dasara celebrations.
The JD(S) is seeing an opportunity to counter the Congress after a complete loss of face in two of its bastions in the recent Lok Sabha byelections at Mandya and Bangalore rural. All the seven affected districts -- Ramanagaram, Kolar, Chikballapur, Tumkur, Mandya, Mysore and Chamarajanagar -- are Congress-JD(S) battlegrounds.
Animal husbandry officials admitted that there is cause for panic among the farmers. “For the last five years, we did not have very heavy rains, so the average temperature remained normal. We have not seen any major outbreak of the F&M disease at all. Now, because of the very heavy rainfall over the last few months, the temperature has been low, leading to a large scale breeding of the F&M virus,” Additional Director (Livestock Health) Dr Nagaraj Shetty told Express.
Farmers, however, maintained that an ego clash between the Animal Husbandry Department and Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) had led to the situation.
“All cattle across the State have to be vaccinated like the pulse polio model under the Centre’s F&M Disease Control Programme. But in the confusion over whether KMF or animal husbandry has to do it, our cattle are dying,” farmer leader Kurubur Shantakumar said. He led a delegation of farmers to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in Mysore on Monday seeking a compensation of at least `25,000 per head of cattle that farmers have lost to the disease.
“They keep talking about Gujarat and how Karnataka is so much better. Everything is politicised. But not a single head of cattle has died in Gujarat. Why can’t Karnataka follow the Gujarat model in the implementation of the F&M disease vaccination programme?” Shantakumar questioned.
The department figures show that 1.04 crore of the 1.25 crore cattle in the state have completed the August-September round of vaccinations under the Central scheme. “We will cover the rest within the next two weeks. We are confident we will control this outbreak,” Commissioner Mohammed Salahuddin said.
Officials contended that farmers have not taken sufficient care to get all their cattle vaccinated, as there is fear that the cows will stop giving milk and the pregnant cows will abort, if vaccinated. “The cows may not give milk for one week, after which they will be fine. The F&M disease can be fatal, the farmers should realise this. And if the cow is pregnant, they should get it vaccinated after the calf is born, they don’t do that,” Salahuddin rued.
Siddaramaiah has set up a seven-member committee under former vice-chancellor of the Karnataka Veterinary, Animal and Fisheries Sciences University Dr Aryan Srinivas Gowda to further investigate causes for the outbreak. There is a fear that the virus might have mutated and overpowered the vaccine.