Livestock lives matter!

Dairy and packaged meat industries have been getting some attention of late. Earlier this month, Commerce Minister Razak Dawood said the government is working on a plan to rationalise taxes on milk supply chain. Meanwhile, news flow relating to unhygienic milk & meat, food poisoning, as well as the controversy over UHT milk has also become quite too frequent in recent years.

The latter may be bad news for the restaurants and corporations caught in such controversy. But it seems good news for livestock sector, because these controversies have somewhat put the spotlight on livestock, which is where the roots of many of these problems emerge from. The sector has now caught the attention of Prime Minister Imran Khan who reportedly also wants to focus on its growth and development – it is another thing though that the ill-managed poultry episode left him with more criticism than support.

For many urbanites, livestock lives do not matter. They couldn’t care less about livestock or the people involved as long as they are getting milk and meat at lowest possible prices. Some futuristic economists on the other hand brush off livestock as irrelevant since in 10-20 years, the world would likely move on to lab grown meat and test tube milk.

There is little doubt that at some point in the foreseeable future, Pakistan will eventually have to take a stance on futuristic trends in meat and milk industry. But that should not prevent the state or the society from recognising the importance of this sector, whether seen from the lens of contribution to GDP, employment, female empowerment, poverty, or basic human health.

The sector is nearly 60 percent of agricultural GDP (where cattle and buffalo combined have the biggest share), 28 percent of total commodity producing GDP, and about 11 percent of the total size of economy. Although there are some serious question marks over the estimation of livestock GDP, which will be covered later in this space, suffice to say the sector contributes significantly to the country’s economy.

In terms of jobs, 11 percent of total employment in the country is in livestock and related sectors, where livestock and dairy producers offer the biggest chunk of that employment. For some regions, such as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa it is even more important; according to KP’s Livestock Policy 2018, the sector employs 46 percent of direct labour force in the province.

Even more important is the fact that the sector is arguably the biggest employer of women. According to the latest Labour Force Survey 2017-2018, nearly 34 percent of total female employment is in various livestock sectors, as against nearly 5 percent in the case of total male employment. In the ‘subsistence livestock farmers’ category, women are about 81 percent of total sectoral employment. These facts have serious implications for those working on women empowerment and gender issues at large.

The sector also needs attention from those working on poverty reduction. A wide majority of livestock owners are landless farmers – 80 to 90 percent of total livestock (cattle & buffaloes) is estimated to be owned by landless farmers, according to industry sources.

These animals are not only a source of their income but also a cashable asset which they sell, for example, when they have to prepare for dowry for their daughters’ wedding or when they fall into debt after being sick and jobless. In Imran Basharat’s words, General Secretary, Sahiwal Cattle Breeders Association, “livestock is one of the biggest reservoirs of unemployment; especially unemployed landless farmers”.

Then there is of course the health and hygiene concerns for citizens at large. At the one end, there is stunting, an issue that has caught public attention since PM Khan flagged it in his speech. And at the other, there is a growing frequency of news reports about people dying or falling sick because of bad quality of meat; or about adulterated loose milk as against the UHT milk which too has not been exempt from real and perceived controversy. In great part, the solution to many of these problems lies in the fixing of livestock sector.

Industry sources say the government is keen to fix the livestock industry; they have had a couple of meetings with industry stakeholders as well. But what exactly is the nature of the problem, the trade-offs in question and potential solutions on the table. These will be the subject of discussion in this space in the ensuing weeks. Stay tuned!