New Delhi: As the Lumpy skin disease continues its killing spree with more than 57000 livestock dead across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday informed about the development of an indigenous vaccine for the virus. He also affirmed that both the Centre and State governments are working to control the spread of the disease.
The Prime Minister also vowed to ensure 100% vaccination among the cattle against the virus and efforts are also being made to track the movement of the animals in order to keep the spread under control.
"We are committed to 100 percent vaccination of livestock by 2025, for foot and mouth disease," he said.
Lumpy Skin Disease is a contagious viral disease that affects cattle and causes fever, skin nodules, and death. Mosquitoes, flies, lice, and wasps spread the disease through direct contact with cattle as well as contaminated food and water. "Our scientists have also prepared an indigenous vaccine for Lumpy Skin Disease," Modi said addressing the International Dairy Federation World Dairy Summit (IDF WDS) 2022, being organized at India Expo Centre & Mart.
The summit was also attended by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Union Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying Parshottam Rupala with his MoS Sanjeev Balyan. "In the recent past, there has been the loss of livestock in many states of India due to the disease named Lumpy. The central government, along with various state governments, is trying to control it," Modi said. Prime Minister also expressed concern about livestock diseases and termed it a major threat as it affects the income of farmers as such diseases also impact milk production and quality.
He also talked about the largest database of dairy animals developed by India and also informed that every animal associated with the dairy sector will be tagged. "We are doing biometric identification of animals. We have named it - Pashu Aadhaar", he said.
"Under Pashu Aadhaar, digital identification of livestock is being done to keep track of their health which will also help in expanding the dairy sector," he added. With a production of about 210 million tonnes, India is the largest producer of milk in the world. The country is also seeing, the fastest growth in production at 6% while production growth at the global level is just 2%.
—IANS