Targeted dog control campaign

IN response to a series of dog attacks at the Sigatoka Research Station and Nawaicoba Quarantine Station, the Ministry of Agriculture announced plans to conduct a targeted dog control campaign yesterday and today.

“The main purpose of this is to prevent the spread of diseases from wild animals to livestock and farmers,” said Avinesh Dayal, director of animal health and production in the Ministry of Agriculture and Waterways.

“It’s mainly to protect the farmers and their farms. We are only doing this to prevent the spread of diseases from the wild animals to livestock, if not, the agricultural sector for livestock will be severely impacted.”

The ministry urged all residents in the affected regions to take extreme precautions regarding their pets.

“The baiting is not for anyone’s pets, it is for the animals that attack the farmers and their livestock and people need to take responsibility of their pets,” Mr Dayal said.

It’s important to note that the ministry explicitly states that the use of baiting as a means of dog population control is not condoned as a long-term solution.

Assurances have been provided by the ministry that poisoning is only considered as a last resort when other efforts, such as trapping, are not feasible, and only in cases where livestock and people’s livelihoods were at risk.

“We conduct awareness at the community level but this issue seems to be prominent in farm areas and so to deal with this issue we use trapping,” Mr Dayal said.

“But by the time we trap all these wild animals, the farms and livestock would have already been affected too severely.”

Seema Deo, the president of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), said they would inform the public of the baiting exercise.

“SPCA will continue to provide notices to the public on the dates and locations of these campaigns,” she said.

“This does not mean we are promoting the activity. We will continue to actively oppose poisoning while we work with the Government to strengthen owner responsibility and get animals desexed.”

The SPCA and other animal welfare organisations have made their stance on baiting very clear and Mr Dayal says, “We will work very closely with these organisations to come up with an alternate solution but until then, ‘baiting’ seems to be effective in terms of keeping our livestock disease free.”