English

Authorities confirm chicken deaths on state farm in Homyel region

The agriculture ministry's veterinary and food safety directorate has confirmed a report that RUP Belarusnafta-Asobina, a state farming company in the Buda Kashalyova district, Homyel region, has been losing large numbers of chickens since recently.

According to the directorate’s website, veterinarians have found no infectious disease on the farm and blame the chicken deaths on gross violations of technical requirements and mismanagement.

The inspectors have sent a report to the Homyel Regional Prosecutor’s Office, which is expected to investigate whether the director and the acting chief veterinarian violated any regulations.

A video has recently appeared online exposing extremely poor conditions inside the broiler chicken farm owned by state-owned oil company Belarusnafta.

The video shows filthy, crowded and unhygienic conditions inside the farm. It also shows huge piles of rotting chicken carcasses left outside the farm's sheds and more decomposing carcasses piled on wagons.

The footage was apparently taken by a farm employee who said that up to a thousand chicken died on the farm every day and described the conditions as a serious health hazard.

The author also complained about low wages and miserable working conditions at the farm.

In an interview given to BelaPAN on Monday, Alyaksandr Lyaychonak, director of Belarusnafta-Asobina, denied the report, claiming that there had been no outbreaks of any infection at the facility, and that all chicken deaths had been "technical" in nature. Dead birds were stored in wagons because of transportation problems and because the disposal plant could not receive the carcasses, he said. However, they were soon removed from the farm and everything that had been in contact with them was sprayed with a disinfectant, Mr. Lyaychonak said.

He expressed confidence that the author of the video was not an employee of Belarusnafta-Asobina because he had no idea what was going on there. "If we lost a thousand chickens every day, we would have not a single chicken without a month," Mr. Lyaychonak said.

According to him, a government commission visited the farm on August 16, right after the video had been released, and found only one minor violation of veterinary requirements.

Mr. Lyaychonak said that he viewed the allegations about his company as slanderous and would seek to find and punish the perpetrator.

A negligence case was opened against the farm’s managers after the death of 75,000 chickens in August 2006. Experts concluded that the birds had died because their feed had contained too much potash.