July 13, 2022
Kerala, India to free up licensing rules for dairy and poultry farms
The state government of Kerala, India, is planning to liberalise the licensing rules for dairy and poultry farms to enhance the domestic production of milk, meat and eggs.
Kerala's Minister for Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development, J. Chinchurani, told the state assembly that the proposed reforms were expected to attract more young people to the sector.
Rounding off the discussion on the demands for grants for her portfolios in the budget, she said two pilot projects — the setting up dairy parks and heifer farms on the lines of industrial and IT parks — were on the anvil.
The first dairy park would come up at Kolahalamedu in Idukki. The Kerala Livestock Development Board (KLDB) would provide the basic facilities including animal health management and artificial insemination of cows. The KLDB would set up more such parks if local bodies provided at least five acres of land.
The second pilot project would be a heifer farm equipped to produce sexed semen calves and nurse them for 30 months before giving them to farmers. It would be a centralised facility for the production of better quality of livestock. Chinchurani said guidelines would be framed for scientific health management of calves.
She said the department was gearing up to introduce radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags for livestock under plans to improve milk production through animal mapping and traceability. The project, known as "e-samrudhi", would also help in disease diagnosis and treatment. The project would be first launched in the Pathanamthitta district.
Chinchurani added that 29 new mobile veterinary units had been procured under the centrally sponsored Livestock Health and Disease Control project. As many as 12 mobile veterinary surgery units would also be pressed into service soon. Efforts were on to set up a network of mobile clinics under the Animal Disease Control Project to provide doorstep veterinary services for dairy farmers.
According to Chinchurani, a high-tech slaughterhouse established at the Meat Products of India and a factory to produce value-added meat products at Eroor in Kollam would begin production this year. A modern poultry processing plant would also come up at Kottukkal in Kollam
She also outlined plans to enhance fodder production by 3.56 lakh metric tonnes and set up herd quarantine/cattle trading centres in the border areas.
- The Hindu
