Nagaland still short on meat production

Spends Rs.231 crore annually on import of livestock  

Our Correspondent
Kohima | July 24  

Commissioner & Secretary for Veterinary & Animal Husbandry, MK Mero has said that Nagaland is still short on meat production to meet the requirement of the consumers.  

The State spends about Rs.231 crore annually on import of livestock with more than Rs.92 crore on pork alone. In this, Mero said the Department is focusing on promotion of pig breeding, for which it had framed a pig breeding policy and Central government agreed to carry it forward.  

He informed this during an official function here last week. Mero said the State pig breeding policy in booklet form will be released by Union Minister for Veterinary & Animal Husbandry, Dairy & Fishery during the inauguration of Veterinary College in Jalukie on August 6 this year.  

It may be recalled that as per the 19th Livestock Census conducted in 2012, the total livestock population of the State was 31, 91,149 numbers compared to 50,23,269 numbers in 2007 census showing a negative growth of 36.47 %.  

Out of 10,67,454 animals (excluding poultry birds, ducks, Turkeys and quails), pig accounted for 47.19% followed by cattle at 22.01%, dog at 10.59% and goat at 9.31% while Mithun and Buffalo population accounted for only 3.30% and 3.06% respectively.  

The poultry birds, ducks, turkeys and quails constituted 66.55% of the total livestock population in the State, according to the report of Nagaland Economic Survey 2015-16 brought out by the Department of Economics & Statistics.  

The Survey report stated that livestock development in the State improved through adoption of various strategies. Charting out a road map, Vision 2020, revival and improvement of the traditional backyard livestock and poultry farming, conversion of demonstration farms into breeding and production units, setting up of private commercial and rural breeding farms on Private Public Partnership mode are some of the initiatives which have scaled up production in this sector.  

The Nagaland State Government is aiming to bring down the import of meat to zero by 2020. Production of milk, meat and egg in the State during 2014-15 was 75.92 thousand tonnes, 39.27 thousand tonnes, and 706 lakh numbers respectively.