To ensure marketing support to the piggery farmers, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Sunday decided to set up a state-of-the-art pig meat processing plant in the state.
Badal took this decision while presiding over a meeting with the delegation of piggery farmers and senior officers of the Animal Husbandry Department to address related to the marketing of pigs’ meat so as to enhance their profitability.
The Chief Minister directed the Additional Chief Secretary, Animal Husbandry, Mandeep Singh Sandhu to find a suitable site in the State so that the proposal to establish a meat processing plant could be implemented in the right earnest.
He also asked the Animal Husbandry Department to take up the matter with UT Administration of Chandigarh to allow the processing of pig meat to our pig farmers in Chandigarh till the new plant was established in the state.
Taking part in the deliberations, the delegation informed the Chief Minister that though the pig farming had picked up but still they were not getting the desired prices prevalent in Nagaland and thus deprived of enough profit.
The pig farmers told that they could only be benefitted after the State’s own meat processing plant becomes operational.
Badal asked the Punjab State Power Corporation limited (PSPCl) chairman-cum-managing director (CMD) KD Chaudhuri to ensure the strict implementation of power supply in all pig farms at par with existing agriculture tariffs. likewise, he also directed the Excise and Taxation Commissioner not to levy VAT on the pig feed as already decided by the state government.
The pig farmers thanked the Chief Minister with whose intervention the Union Railways Minister had considerably reduced the freight charges on each rack by Rs 90,000 for transporting pigs from Punjab to Dimapur (Nagaland). With this, the pig farmers would have to now pay Rs 1.95 lakh instead of Rs 2.85 lakh per rack.
Earlier, the Additional Chief Secretary Animal Husbandry Sandhu updated Badal about the status of pig development in Punjab and said that earlier the pig rearing was in the hands of poor strata of the society and the people used to keep just three to four pigs in small enclosures.
Now with the passage of time, piggery profession was being adopted even by the affluent section of the society on commercial lines, Sandhu said adding that there were nearly 400 progressive piggery farmers in the state.