With a commitment to provide freshest, healthiest and delicious chicken to the homes of millions of people in the State, the Management of Odisha State Poultry and Poultry Products Co-operative Marketing Federation limited (OPOlFED) is planning to set up Chicken Fresh Outlets all over the State.
As all the three Chicken Fresh Outlets operating in Bhubaneswar on pilot basis have proved highly encouraging and profit making initiative for OPOlFED, Fisheries and Animal Resources Development (FARD) Secretary Bishnupada Sethi is taking this new initiative to great heights.
Accordingly Sethi held talks with the senior officials of the OPOlFED here on January 22 to chalk out strategy to set up 53 Chicken Fresh Outlets in 30 districts of the State.
A Detailed Project Report (DPR) is being prepared for 53 outlets at a cost of `5.54 crore on Build-Operate-lease-Transfer (BOlT) basis with active participation of OPOlFED along with the private entrepreneurs.
This initiative will not only accelerate poultry entrepreneurship development, but also increased sale will trigger more production in poultry sector and ensure higher growth rate, said a senior officer of the Department of Fisheries and ARD (DoFARD).
Setting up of 53 outlets will provide direct and indirect employment to at least 300 persons and increased sale will help out the new entrepreneurs to start poultry farming.
Presently about 4,600 broiler farms are in operation in the State, which make broiler meat production at 76.4 Thousand Metric Ton (TMT) per annum.
There is hardly any import from neighbouring States as was done earlier. So the local production is meeting the domestic demand. The Per Capita availability of 1.8 KG of chicken meat per annum is still low. Due to urbanisation and industrialisation, demand for broiler meat has been increasing continuously.
Keeping in view the growth potential of small scale broiler farming in the State, the Government is laying emphasis on establishment of broiler farms as commercial agri-enterprises in order to achieve broiler meat production of 100 TMT per annum by 2020.
And setting up of 53 Chicken Fresh Outlets in industrial and urban centers of the districts will go a long way to achieve the target, feel officials in DoFARD.