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The Dept. of Animal Production and Health

by Dr. A. S. Abeyratne, former Director, DAPH

Twenty five years have gone by since the establishment of the Dept. of Animal Production and Health. At this time when the Department is celebrating the services rendered, it may well be more appropriate to evaluate the performance of the officers and collectively by the department.

Very few are aware that a new organisation called Veterinary Department, was established in Colombo, by the British rulers of Sri Lanka as far back as 1889. A Veterinary expatriate, Dr. C. A. Lye, was recruited from Britain to head this institution. Soon more British-qualified veterinarians were imported to handle disease outbreaks, meat hygiene programs, equine veterinary practice and support local manpower development.

It was only in 1895, that the first Ceylonese (Sri Lankan), veterinarian Dr. W. A. Silva, returned from India after obtaining veterinary qualifications. Incidentally, Dr. W. A. Silva, later gave up his veterinary profession and entered the political arena and became the first Minister of Health in the country. Since that time, the Veterinary Department grew in combination with the development of the Colombo Municipal Council's Veterinary Department. In 1935, the Veterinary Department was shifted to Peradeniya and was soon amalgamated as one Division of the Dept. of Agriculture. Thus this institutional arrangement remained for 43 years until 1978 when the Division of Animal Health and Production was upgraded to a Class 1 department in the government institutional arrangements.

Thus, a new department, viz Department of Animal Production and Health (DAPH) was established under Mr. S. Thondaman, Hon. Minister of Rural Industrial Development. Since then, this Department existed for 25 years and survived a government institutional reform exercises, though its administration changed from the Rural Industrial Development Ministry to Agriculture Ministry and then again to Estate Infrastructure and finally to the present system of being administered by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Samurdhi. It is thus more appropriate for the Department to actually look back at the 103 years of service and not just the past 25 years.

Institutional development

With the establishment of a new department in 1978 under a new Director, Dr. A. Bandaranayake, it necessitated to strengthen its infrastructure. In 1979, four new divisions, viz., Education, Training and Information, Livestock Farms, Animal Breeding and Livestock Development was established under four new Deputy Directors. The 22 livestock farms administered and managed by the Department came under the Livestock Farms Division.

Twelve years later, in 1990, a policy decision was taken by the government to transfer all livestock farms to the National Livestock Development Board (NLDB) and close the Livestock Farms Division. This transfer was only the first step in the government's privatisation policy and soon the NLDB was expected to privatise the farms. The Division of Animal Health and extension continued to supervise the activities of the government veterinary surgeons posted to various parts of the country. In 1987, the veterinary surgeons came under the administration of the Provincial Councils. With this change of administration, the government's institutional reforms committee in 1989, suggested a new structure to the Department, to have only 225 persons compared to the 3,000 under enrolment in 1985.

However, the Provincial Departments of Animal Production and Health continued to get government support and the cadre of veterinarians was soon raised from 100 to 220 so that each Assistant Government Agent area will have a veterinarian posted. The staff level officers of DAPH who were hitherto under the Sri Lanka Agriculture Service were resorbed in to a new service viz, Sri Lanka APH Service. The Livestock Development Instructors who performed yeoman service to implement field programs were included in the Middle Level Technical Service.

Livestock projects

At the time of forming a new department only one foreign-funded project, West German Assisted (Freedom from Hunger Campaign) was in operation. This project supported the technical program of the Dairy Training Centre at Undugoda. Incidentally, this was the only training centre the new department owned at that time, apart from a very small facility at Polonnaruwa. In 1990, Sweden (SIDA) assisted the Department with a 10-year project to strengthen veterinary research, disease investigation, animal breeding and veterinary vaccine production.

Soon the Government of West Germany (GTZ) commenced a project to support livestock planning and goat development in the island. In 1990 the Asian Development Bank launched a massive project to cover many aspects of livestock development in the country. The ADB project in particular, supported a massive manpower development program, constructing several veterinary offices and housing for staff, new regional livestock training centers, disease investigations centers, School of Animal Husbandry, a Livestock Information Unit, and Institute for conducting continuing education programs and a new three storied building at Getambe to house the Department.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation chipped in with many small-scale projects to support on going programs and to cover deficient areas. One such area was the control of Rinderpest, a deadly cattle disease. Canada assisted the development of a breed of poultry. However, most of these projects were completed by the year 1990. Thus the period 1980 to 1990 had a substantial number of foreign assisted projects. Some of these projects have been evaluated and the impact recorded. With the commencement of the insurgent activities in the South and the war in the North and East, most foreign-funded projects closed down and new investments were not made.

New look

With the establishment of the Provincial Councils, the DAPH had to reformulate plans to implement the functions listed under the reserve list and the joint list of the Provincial Councils Act. Thus the ongoing Veterinary Research Program became a priority area. It also necessitated the enactment of new laws to implement some of the reserved functions.

Thus new laws on Animal Diseases Act (1993) and Animal Feeds (1986) were formulated and passed by the parliament. New regulations too were formulated and soon put into practice. A Veterinary Drug Control Authority (VDCA) and an Animal Feeds Advisory Committee (AFAC) were established according to the acts. The VDCA regulates all imports and local production of veterinary pharmaceuticals and biological preparations.

The AFAC regulates the import of animal feed ingredients and the quality of locally produced animal feeds. A veterinary internship program was introduced in 1997. An Epidemiological Unit was established to support the animal disease surveillance and animal disease control. A new system for animal disease reporting was also introduced in line with international requirements. Professional training programs were formulated and implemented at national level at the Institute of Continuing Education.

The poultry industry was developing very fast and they were embarking on export of poultry products. The DAPH launched new quality control programs for the poultry sector which later became joint programs with the CSIRO. Thus today the poultry sector has possibilities of adopting HACCP programs for their poultry processing units. The Veterinary Quarantine Service was expanded to meet with the growing needs for the import and export sector. DAPH commenced livestock industry monitoring systems as far back as 1990.

Impact on farmers

The ADB livestock project during the period 1980-1990 supported the formation of livestock farmer associations in the country. Thus officers of DAPH soon established Swine Farmer Cooperatives, Poultry Cooperatives and Dairy Cooperatives.

Later it was seen that up to 50 per cent of the milk collected by the National Milk Board came from these farmer organisations. A national level poultry federation and a national level swine federation was established before the projects were terminated.

Farmers themselves who collected and marketed their produce manned all these cooperatives. Some more developed cooperatives supplied inputs such as extension, feed etc to the members.

These cooperatives were modeled under the Ammul Dairy Cooperatives of India. When the Indian Peace Keeping Force was in operation, they imported goats for the consumption of the soldiers. These goats were imported to the North and East sea ports. These imports did not come under Sri Lanka's quarantine supervision and as a result a deadly disease called Rinderpest was introduced. The disease spread like wild fire causing deaths among cattle and buffaloes.

The DAPH soon mobilised its veterinary surgeons and within a year the disease was controlled and later eradicated. This helped the rural farmers to salvage their livestock from extinction. The Provincial Veterinary Service continued to offer the animal health, extension and animal breeding services.

About 70,000 hybrid calves are born annually due to the artificial insemination program. The goat-breeding program had an effect on the slaughter weight of the goats within a 10-year period. Unfortunately, DAPH could not keep pace with the technological developments of the poultry sector and soon the poultry vaccine program had to be abandoned. Today all requirements of poultry vaccines are imported to the country by the private sector under the licence of the VDCA. Most monitoring systems in DAPH were computerised.

The artificial insemination recording system has been improved over the years and is currently is assisted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Farmers are trained at Divisional Livestock Training Centres located at Anuradhapura, Matara and Kekanadura where new innovations are introduced to farmers besides the vocational training programs. The School of Animal Husbandry, Welisara, which offered a two-year diploma program to unemployed youths was closed down due to an imposing security reasons and a new school was established at Kundasale in 2002.

Due to the innovative teaching of this center the diploma holders find no difficulty in obtaining jobs in the private sector. A training scheme to train unemployed youths as private artificial inseminators which commenced in 1978 continues and as a result half the number of 150,000 inseminations that are performed on cattle in the field are now done by these youths. This is a very effective way of breeding cows at the farmers cow shed level.

A highly skilled advisory service is made available through the DAPH for the private sector. At Ministry level a poultry development coordinating committee has been in existence since 1990. The National and Regional farmer groups now has the opportunity to meet the policy forming authorities in the Ministry in a more organised manner.

Future trends

The contribution to the GDP by the livestock sector has remained at 1 per cent. However about 500,000 farmers and others are involved in the livestock production to marketing chain. This group will have about 2 million dependents. Therefore economically, the livestock sector is very important, particularly in rural areas. Under the world globalisation trend, the local industry will face a serious challenge from imports.

Therefore the local farmers must be given solutions to reduce their costs of productions and produce quality products so that they could compete with foreign products. Veterinary Research and the extension network must join hands with the private sector to make livestock an attractive self-employment venture.

The Veterinary Research Institute should expand the diagnostic facility to cover support to the export/import and quality control, reference laboratory and routine diagnosis. The present poultry diagnosis unit must expand to meet with the growing needs of the poultry sector.

The existing veterinary dispensaries in the island should be privatised in stages.

Peradeniya veterinary hospital can function well as a private organisation. Animal Disease surveillance should be a major activity of DAPH. This should be linked to the diagnosis facility of the VRI. In conclusion it is extremely necessary to reformulate action programs for DAPH for the next 10 years and to restructure the department to implement such programs.

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