Poultry industry grows despite import policy problems, turbulent political situation

Eggs are great, eggs are fun, eggs are good for everyone: that's how the familiar jingle on television went. And Indians seemed to agree wholeheartedly. Last year, they consumed over 22 billion eggs as the country scrambled into the big league of the international poultry scene.

Consider the figures: egg production in India was around 12.5 billion in 1981; in 1989, it went up to 22.8 billion. During the same period, poultry meat production rose from an estimated 1.3 lakh tonnes to 3.25 lakh tonnes. And now, India is the fifth largest producer of eggs in the world after China, the Soviet Union, the US, and Japan.

For the industry, however, not all of this is good news. The turbulent situation in Kashmir and the anti-Mandal agitation severely hit poultry farmers in north India. Each day, they used to send about 50,000 broiler chickens and cull birds and two to three lakh eggs to Kashmir. Now as that market has become unavailable, prices have crashed.
The anti-Mandal agitation also disrupted supplies to hatcheries in Haryana leading to increased mortality. Though the market has now stabilised and the prices improved, the uncertainty remains.

There have been other glitches as well. In September, newspaper reports that many poultry farms in north India were infected by strains of salmonella bacterium led to a bitter controversy and a crash in demand for eggs. Then a government decision to disallow imports of grand parent stock (from which commercial chicks are bred) split the industry into lobbies of grand parent importers and indigenous pure-line breeders.

Says Arun Goyle of Essex Farms, who leads the importers' lobby: "The poultry farmers must have a wider choice since the quality of many indigenous pure line breeders is often suspect. Counters Vinod Kapur of Kegg Farms, a leader of the pure line lobby: "We are not afraid of competition provided it is fair." He emphatically states that the Government must charge a uniform rate of duty over import of grand parents - a reference to raids on hatcheries earlier this year which revealed under-invoicing of imported stocks to evade custom duty.

B. Venkatesh Rao Rao, 55, chairman of Venkateshwara Hatcheries Ltd (VHL), started his career in 1969 with a poultry farm at Hyderabad. Two years later he set up VHL. Today it is the industry's undisputed leader. Apart from poultry breeding, VHL also manufactures feed, animal health products, poultry equipment and processed chicken products (Venky's chicken). With a turnover of Rs 175 crore, VHL claims a 75 per cent market share in broiler chicks and 50 per cent in layer chicks.