M. Prisiazhniuk: ‘In Ukraine it is necessary to reform the pig breeding and cattle breeding industries’

Cattle and pig breeding industries are in an urgent need of reformation in the sphere of Ukrainian livestock industry. The press office of Ministry of Agrarian Policy reported it with reference to the Minister of Agrarian Policy of Mykola Prisiazhniuk.

‘One of the priorities of today is to provide the population with high-quality food products of animal origin, to increase the competitiveness of livestock sphere and ensure food security of the state. On the agenda there is also expanding and seeking new markets for animal products, especially for milk and meat, as well as protection of the domestic consumer market from low-quality imports of livestock products’, said the Minister.

Analyzing the situation in cattle and pig breeding, N. Prisiazhniuk explained why these exactly areas should be reformed.

‘The sphere of pig breeding has traditionally been a larger part of the production and consumption of meat in Ukraine, it is 30 - 40%, has its own potential of food supplies due to large volumes of grain cultivation, it also has a short production cycle (feeding up to 120 days) and is able to ensure the growth of volumes of production quickly. But today, unfortunately, the sphere does not provide the demands of the domestic food market for pork and has a negative dynamics of production, it does not have its own breeding and genetic basis for a substantial increase of the production, it also does not meet the quality indicators for meat and meat needs of the world food market’.

As for dairy cattle, the Minister explained that the milk takes the second position in the structure of the gross product of agriculture (in the last 5 years - about 15%). Ukraine is known worldwide as a traditional producer and exporter of milk and dairy products, it has mastered foreign markets with the conditions for increasing exports of milk and dairy products.

‘However, we note the following negative trends: a persistent reduction in the number of cattle, a significant decrease in the production and consumption of milk, the high cost of current milk production, the inability to meet the effective demand not only in the foreign but also in domestic markets, because traditional techniques are no longer able to ensure the quality of milk, which would meet the standards of European and world markets, and there is no proper breeding and genetic basis for building high-performance of highly-productive cows’, added N. Prisiazhniuk..

Summing up, the Minister assured that the reforms in the fields of cattle and pig breedingwill be implemented soon.

APK-Inform