Jamaican Government urges goat and sheep farmers to boost meat production

The Jamaican Government is urging its goat and sheep farmers to increase the production of meat in order to meet the growing demand from distributors.

The distributors in the country are being encouraged to support local production instead of importing. It was announced by the Jamaican Ministry of Industry Commerce Agriculture and Fisheries acting permanent secretary Reginald Budhan.

Budhan said: “When we (the ministry) looked at the level of imports, we concluded that we had to make imports less attractive. So we prepared a comprehensive analysis, which was presented to the Ministry of Finance in 2012, and we were successful in getting the duties increased.”

He further explained that according to the information released by the Health Ministry’s Veterinary Public Health Division, suggested that there was a production of goat and sheep meat has declined from 963,000kg in 2013 to 751,625kg in 2014.

He highlighted that the results were not as per the expectation despite there was a sharp decline in imports from more than one million kilograms in 2008 to under 603,000kg in 2014, consequent on a revision to the tariff levied on these products.

Budhan has also successfully lobbied the distributors’ support to purchase more locally produced meats.

He also explained to the distributors that there is a need for an organised system to consistently supply the volumes of meat that will satisfy client demand.

---

Image: The Jamaican Government urges goat and sheep farmers to boost meat production. Photo: courtesy of Jamaica Information Service.