Demand, Supply & Business Volume of Goat Meat in Nepal

FAO, Nepal

In the past, demand for goat meat fluctuated as health conscious people preferred white meat and shift was towards chicken meat. However, when bird flu incidence was reported chicken meat consumption was again substituted by goat meat and other meat. Until 1990s, chicken meat was expensive over goat and buffalo meat. The order in terms of meat price changed to goat meat, chicken, pork, buff meat and continues till date.

Per capita consumption of meat in Nepal is about 9 kg per annum but urban consumption is nearly 14 kg/year. The increase in total demand for meat has been estimated at 2.2% per annum during the 1990s which is roughly equivalent to the increase in population. The overall growth in meat production during last ten years remained 2.95 percent, with highest rate of growth in pig and poultry meat production (4.0 Percent). These growth rates do not seem to be realized from increased animal productivity but from the increase in number of animals.

This trend in meat consumption is increasing with the increase in urbanization and associated income improvement as meat is highly income elastic consumption item. There is, therefore, a growing gap between domestic supply and demand. The countrywide shortage of meat supply is currently met by imports from India (mainly live buffaloes, goats) and some (sheep and goat~chyangra) from Tibet autonomous region of China (nearly 17 % of the consumption is met from imports). The details on marketing channel, volume going through these channels and price of meat in different part of the country is presented in separate chapter.

The constraints in live goat marketing for meat purpose are: - Supply constraints and associated collection difficulties because of scattered production - Lack of specialized vehicles for goat transportation (transported in bus rooftops) - Price bargaining system favoring middlemen - Tax hassles in transportation particularly for imported goats - Wholesalers' problem related with buying in cash and selling in credit.

It has been reported that about 20 percent of credit sales involve delays payments and as high as 5 percent are never recovered.

Attempts made to implement the Animal Slaughterhouse and Meat Inspection Act and its regulation was with the objective of availing clean and hygienic meat to the consumers since last 10 years has been largely unsuccessful. Some of the provisions are difficult to observe for example- meat inspection regulation bans the use of skin as meat but this practice is continues unabated for three reasons; i) failure to effectively enforce the law, ii) skin price much lower (less than half) than the meat price and iii) Nepalese consumers' prefer for meat with goat skin.