The Hindu Business Line : Poultry sector urged to focus on organic farming

THE poultry sector has been urged to give serious thought to diversifying into organic poultry to get away from pollution and high concentration in specific zones.

To achieve this, Ms Neerja Rajkumar, Joint Secretary in the Department of Animal Husbandry, Government of India, has suggested that the sector could move over to new tracts like Uttaranchal, Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh which are hitherto unexposed to `pollution'.

Inaugurating the 7th National Poultry Expo organised by the publishers of the Hyderabad-based industry magazine — Poultry Fortune, Ms Rajkumar said poultry had become the right tool for rural poverty alleviation and nutrition supplement.

Value-addition through processing technology and standardisation of poultry production including bird testing, feed, pesticides and antibiotic residues screening would assume the next important stage of development for the poultry sector, which has turned out to be a sunset industry, she said.

As for the demand made by the Tamil Nadu trade to classify poultry under agriculture, the official said this was purely a State subject and the respective State Governments should undertake the exercise.

Already, the Uttar Pradesh Government had classified certain kind of poultry-based on its size as agriculture. But the Centre, given a say, would not even want any stipulation like the size or so for treating it as agriculture, she added.

With regard to the demand made by the State Broiler Coordination Committee that the animal grade food grain from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns be given to the poultry feed makers at subsidised rates, Ms Neerja said the enquiries revealed that none from the poultry industry participated in the FCI auction sale of the first or second grade food grains.

Mr O.P. Singh, Chief Executive Officer of Venkateshwara Hatcheries Group, felt that if the current growth rate of the poultry sector was to be maintained, the domestic inputs going into the production such as foodgrains used for feed mix, vitamins and nutrients etc needed a closer analysis. The financial fundamentals of poultry farmers must be analysed to protect from price erosion when themarket was hit by incidence of avian flu, he said.

The likely impact on the poultry sector due to the impending value-added tax structure to be introduced from next April by the States should also be viewed, he added.

The two-day `Poultry Expo 2004', inaugurated by the Tamil Nadu Animal Husbandry Minister, Mr P.V. Damodaran, has attracted over 80 manufacturers and marketers of poultry equipment and chemical makers.