2. In spite of having the world’s largest livestock population in India, the potential of animal rearing remains underutilized. In this context, discuss the challenges faced by the meat and poultry sector and suggest measures for accelerated and sustained growth for this sector.

Approach:

♤ Give the current status of the livestock population in India.

♤ List the challenges faced by the meat and poultry sector.

♤ Then give an account of measures that can be taken for accelerated and sustained growth in the sector.

Answer:

With only 2.29% of the land area of the world, India is maintaining about 10.71% of the world’s livestock. A large manpower is also involved in livestock related activities like manufacture of animal food products and beverages, manufacture of textiles, tanning & dressing of leather, farming of animals etc. Despite that, the potential of animal rearing remains underutilised due to various challenges such as:

♤ Lack of poultry feed: Maize is the single most important ingredient of poultry feed,

its’ availability at a reasonable cost is the major problem of poultry sector.

♤ Diseases: Pathogenic and emerging diseases often cause heavy losses both in domestic market and international trade.

♤ Lack of trained Human Resource: This results in less than optimal output.

♤ Low productivity: Dead weight of carcass is low, indicating low biomass. For bovine and cattle, milk production is also lesser than international varieties.

♤ Poor hygiene and upkeep: Poultry unfit to meet industry and export norms. The challenges faced by the meat sector include:

♤ Lack of modernised abattoir: it results in poor efficiency and issues of sanitation which hampers export.

♤ Cultural issues: In some states meat industry has been facing resistance due to religious sentiments.

♤ Low productivity of livestock: In terms of meat output.

♤ Low level of processing and value addition in animal products.

Both these sectors suffer from ineffective marketing strategy to project these products.