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The Indian government has issued tough new rules to suppress the trade in aged, unproductive livestock for slaughter — a move that will severely disrupt the livestock supply chain at the heart of the rural economy.In a notification made public late on Friday, the government banned the sale of aged cattle for slaughter at the country’s livestock markets, and imposed strict documentation requirements for any sale and purchase of bovines.
Sagari Ramdas, who has studied India’s dairy and livestock industries for the Food Sovereignty Alliance, said the measures were a de facto “countrywide ban on the slaughter of cattle and buffalo, and the consumption of beef.”
The restrictions will cheer Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hardline Hindu nationalist supporters, who revere the cows as a semi-divine symbol of the nation. But they will dismay many farmers, for whom cattle is often their most valuable economic asset, even after it ceases to provide milk.
The new rules will further marginalise the many mostly Muslim rural livestock traders, who buy and transport unwanted or unproductive bovines from rural villages to larger livestock markets, where the animals either find new owners, or are purchased for slaughter.
Importantly, the new restrictions will apply not just to cows — whose slaughter is already illegal in several Indian states — but all bovines, including the buffaloes that provide more than half of India’s fresh milk. It is likely to prove the undoing of India’s $5bn in beef exports, which was in fact mostly buffalo meat.
“The rural economy is going to be smashed,” Ms Ramdas said. “This will be the total collapse of the livestock economy, unless it goes underground. The beef economy, the dairy economy, and the leather economy will all be completely destroyed.”
India has a cattle population of about 190m, and a further 108m buffaloes. These animals, mostly reared by small and marginal farmers who may own just a few, are prized for their milk, but retain a strong market value even after they can no longer produce, given the demand for meat and animal by products.
Mr Modi, a strict vegetarian, has previously bemoaned India’s $5bn beef export industry, which he described as a horrific “pink revolution” that should be stopped. His government has made cow protection an important policy priority, while India has also seen as spurt of vigilante attacks by rightwing groups on those transporting bovines.
Under the new rules — which have been added to the national prevention of animal cruelty law, those seeking to either sell or buy cattle must provide documentation proving that they are “agriculturalists” and that they own farmland. They must also attest to government officials that the animals are not being traded for the purposes of slaughter, but will be used for agricultural purposes.
“What you are actually saying is that slaughter is a form of cruelty,” says Ms Ramdas. “You are criminalising the entire element of slaughter.”
But the new rules could seriously skew the economics of rearing cows and buffalo, whose milk production may not be sufficient to cover the investment required to feed them, especially through the long, hot summer when fodder is scarce. “More and more farmers will stop rearing animals,” says Ms Ramdas.
According to the livestock census, India already has an estimated 5.2m stray cattle — many of them wandering through urban areas — abandoned by owners that no longer feel it makes sense to feed them, but who cannot find a market for them, due to existing restrictions on cow slaughter.
The number is likely to rise sharply given wide-ranging purview of the new law. It also comes at a time when India’s milk demand is set to rise sharply, driven by the hunger for more nutritious food among the increasingly affluent middle class.
Ms Ramdas says the new laws equating slaughter with animal cruelty could also pave the way for a ban on the trade in other livestock animals, including poultry and sheep.
Source: Finanical Times
