Licensing rules for dairy and poultry farms to be liberalised in Kerala

Dairy park to come up at Kolahalamedu in Idukki

The State government is planning to liberalise the licensing rules for dairy and poultry farms to enhance the domestic production of milk, meat and eggs.

Minister for Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development J. Chinchurani told the Assembly on Tuesday that the proposed reforms were expected to attract more youngsters to the sector.

Rounding off the discussion on the demands for grants for her portfolios in the budget, she said two pilot projects, to set 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 production of better quality of livestock. The Minister said guidelines would be framed for scientific health management of calves.

She said the department was gearing up to introduce RFID tags for livestock under plans to improve milk production through animal mapping and traceability. The project named e-samrudhi would also help in disease diagnosis and treatment. The project would be rolled out in Pathanamthitta district first.

The Minister said 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.

Ms. Chinchurani said the 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 soon.

She also outlined plans to enhance fodder production by 3.56 lakh metric tonnes and set up herd quarantine-cum-cattle trading centres in the border areas.