From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore

Bangalore, Aug 26: A State-wide drive for vaccination of all cattle heads in Karnataka will be taken up from September to eliminate foot and mouth disease, according to Animal Husbandry Minister T B Jayachandra.

Jayachandra, who is also the minister for Law and Paraliamentary Affairs, said the State-wide vaccination drive will be taken up free of cost to help the cattle rearing farmers.

The officials of the veterinary department have made elaborate arrangements for the last one month to launch the Vaccination drive, he said.

The minister appealed to all the farmers to make use of the opportunity and save their cattle from contracting the deadly disease.

Informing that the State farmers had suffered heavily last year, he said while over 50000 contracted the disease, and more than 14000 cattle heads were perished.

"To minimise the financial loss of the farmers, the State Government had paid a cash compensation of Rs 25000 to each of the cattle head loss" he said.

The vaccination drive, which would be launched from September 1 would cover over 119 lakhs of cattle heads.

"The vaccination drive would be launched in the entire state simultaneously in each of the assembly segments, taluks, and villages and the exercise would last for over 15 days" he said.

The department officials had covered the vaccination drive for about 96 per cent of the total cattle heads in the state last year, he said.

''This year, we have targeted to achieve 100 per cent coverage,” he declared.

He said vaccination was the only effective option to weed out the Foot-and-Mouth disease among the cattle heads.

Stating that the efforts of the state government to eradicate the disease cannot be successful without the full support of the farmers, he said that the total expenditure involved in the entire exercise is about Rs 25 to 30 crore and is totally borne by the Union Government.

Outlining the other measures taken by the State Government to maintain the health of the cattle heads, he said the District and Divisional level surveillance centres would be established across the state to monitor the outbreak of the life threatening diseases.

''The centers would be equipped with laboratory for testing of blood samples of the disease affected cattle heads and other related infrastructure," he said.

Anwering questions from reporters, he said that he proposed to bring a legislation enabling the department to take control of all grazing lands including that of AmritMahalKaval and Gomala lands in the state.

The process of identification of such lands are in progress, Jayachandra added.