The Guyana Livestock Development Authority (GLDA) on Tuesday rejected claims that livestock have been dying across the country without intervention, saying recent floods had caused some farmers to lose animals.
Chief Executive Officer Dr Dwight Walrond told a press briefing that the GLDA maintained an active veterinary surveillance programme, including extension services, disease monitoring, vaccination campaigns, diagnostic support and emergency response whenever cases were reported.
He said the authority had a presence in all ten administrative regions through a decentralised system.
“Livestock production, like every agricultural activity, faces occasional challenges, but to suggest that the authority is absent or indifferent is a gross distortion of the reality,” Walrond said.
He was responding to accusations by opposition party members that the Onverwagt Abattoir was non-operational and a failed experiment, among other allegations.
Walrond said some 1,137 farmers and over 34,000 animals had received support from the Veterinary Surveillance Programme over the past month, including 17,500 hundred-pound bags of total mix ration (TMR) for animals in the Mahaica Creek, Mahaicony Creek and Abary areas, along with molasses and veterinary hampers to support the animals’ immune systems.
“As we speak today, the team is in the Abary working and another team is in Kokerite Savannah in Region Six,” he said.
Walrond said the Onverwagt Abattoir remained operational and had produced more than 112,000 kilogrammes of beef using cattle from farmers in Regions Four, Five, Six, Nine and Ten, as well as cattle imported from Bonfim, Brazil through approved channels. He said the abattoir would continue accepting cattle through the week for slaughtering on Friday.
The GLDA encouraged farmers with concerns or credible evidence of wrongdoing in the livestock sector to report them to the authority.
