5. Challenges faced by Animal Husbandry Sector

♤ Lack of access to organized markets and meager profits distract farmers from investing into improved technologies and quality inputs. Informal market intermediaries often exploit the producers.

♤ Shrinking and degrading pastures coupled with limitations of fodder, lack of sufficient veterinary care and apathy to assisted reproductive technologies have been the major constraints in reaching the full potential of animal husbandry e.g. potential of raising Pashmina goats’ viz. Changthangi in Ladakh and Chegu in Himachal Pradesh remains under exploited due to above reasons.

♤ Livestock extension services are almost absent. The extension format, methodology and set-up established for agriculture has failed to cater to the needs of the livestock sector. Consequently, only 5.1% of the farm households were able to access any information on animal husbandry against 40.4% for crop farming. The only centrally sponsored scheme on “Livestock extension and delivery services” with a budgetary outlay of Rs. 15.00 crore remained non-operational.

♤ Sufficient facility / setup for disease diagnosis, reporting, epidemiology, surveillance and forecasting are not on board. Several diagnostic kits required for disease surveillance and monitoring are imported at a huge cost. The limited diagnostics available in the country are produced by few laboratories and are not of desired quality.

♤ Testing of milk for safety and quality parameters at the collection centers is almost non- existent. Lack of proper anaerobic waste treatment and dairy by-product utilization are the other concerns. Due to quality concerns of milk, value addition and export potential has not been fully exploited.

♤ India has huge diversity of animals, which are adaptable to harsh climate, limited nutrition, and resistance to diseases and stress. Populations of most of these breeds have alarmingly gone down due to comparative preferences for highly productive exotic breeds. This calls for an immediate action for systematic conservation, genetic improvement and sustainable utilization of indigenous livestock breeds.

♤ There is also a huge demand of Indian ethnic meat products in the international market. However, lack of international processing standards is the hindrance. Unfortunately, schemes on modernization of slaughterhouses and by-product utilization have not been effectively implemented.

♤ Bulk of the investment for livestock development comes from the state governments. The central government contributes about 10% to the total investment. There is hardly any private sector investment in animal husbandry

♤ Microbial contamination, antibiotic residues and adulteration in milk, meat and animal feed is rampant. Quality control for veterinary drugs and vaccines is almost non-existent. There is a need to establish food testing laboratories duly accredited by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to check adulteration.