The Agriculture Ministry has clarified that swift action was taken to eradicate the spread of Bovine Tuberculosis and Brucellosis.

Farmers had raised concerns the testing for the two diseases wasn’t done properly.

Kashmir Singh has been a farmer all his life and lost more than one-third of his cattle.

“There was a mishap for many years in testing cattle from diseases such as brucellosis and TB. This was not carried out for a period of one or two decades it was not properly done.”

Singh says a lot of culling was done to remove the infected cattle.

“But luckily after 2014 they came in big force but by then big damage was done. We have been in operation for more than 50 years but we never had Tb affected on our farms as that big number.”

Agriculture Ministry’s Permanent Secretary Ritesh Dass says rapid action was taken and recurrence of the diseases has diminished.

“Swift action was taken, I do agree that brucellosis and TB has been a major factor that has affected Fiji’s Cattle industry and other countries have also had similar problems.”

The Fiji Cooperative Dairy Company Limited is working with the Agriculture Ministry to assist the farmers.