What does the 3.33% decline in India?s livestock numbers in 2012 over 2007 portend? The 3.82% and 9.07% fall in goat and sheep headcounts, respectively, is worrying as this is likely to cause greater demand pressure on meat prices while the 7.5 million increase in milch animal numbers should mean that milk production has commensurately gone up. Poultry population, too registered, a significant growth over the period, of 12.39%. Analysts have already spoken of an ongoing shift in dietary preferences of Indians?in both urban and rural areas, expenditure on proteinaceous foods, including meats, pulses, milk, and egg, and on fruit and vegetables at the household level was up significantly in 2010-12 over 2005-10 while that on cereals fell, as per National Sample Survey Organisation data.
With mutton, lamb, poultry and fish being the only non-taboo meats in India, it could now fall on the latter two and eggs to bridge the gap in supply of animal proteins (dairy considered a separate head). If the choice of meat consumed has not changed significantly across households, then it is likely to stoke further rise in prices of mutton and lamb. If, however, the fall in supply points at a lack in demand, the rising meat consumption in India is likely to cause poultry and fish prices to flare up. Given the choice of meats as a source of protein is largely guided buy taste, no great increase in uptake of pulses or dairy, to keep up the levels of protein in the diet, can be foreseen if there is a shortfall in mutton/lamb supply. Given imports could prove to be an expensive alternative, increasing biotechnology-led efforts to either shore up numbers or increase the yield per animal could help. For instance, recombinant DNA technology, already in use in developed countries, to increase the conversion of feed into meat, may be considered. For that, India must first get rid of its hitherto sceptical treatment of genetic modification technologies, especially those that concern food.
