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Goat Meat Industry in Nepal: Opportunities and
Challenges
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 Goat Meat Industry in Nepal: Opportunities and Challenges

With the consumption all over the country among all the cultural, social and ethnic groups, goat meat is the second
most consumed meat in Nepal after buffalo meat, and constitutes for a quarter of all meat consumed despite the
highest cost per unit weight. Goat meat industry has a good market potential for the budding entrepreneurs and
investors if they could capitalize on the growing market demand.

Value Chain of Goat meat Industry

Generally, Nepali farmers rear goats through traditional model of stall-feeding or grazing in near-by forests. Most of
the farmers, especially in the rural areas, are involved in goat farming due to low investment requirements. While
private organizations like Agro-vets supply inputs like salt, veterinary medicines and forage/fodder seeds to the
farmers, whereas government agencies like DLSO (District livestock services office) and Local NGOs provide
technical knowledge and necessary inputs.

Farmers usually sell live goats either to the traders or directly to the local butchers. Retailers like butchers and fresh
houses then buy live goats from traders, process them and sell it to the customers, hotels, restaurants and party
venues. Traders usually handle the selling process by using trucks/bus.

Similarly, meat processing involve cleaning, removing inedible parts and wrapping it in plastic for storage. After
storing the processed meat in deep freeze for the long period of time, they are delivered to household and
institutional customers in main markets like Pokhara and Kathmandu through insulated van.

Figure 1: Value chain of Goat meat Industry

 Table 1: Major End markets for Goat meat in Nepal
Major End Markets for Goat Meat

Local Market Surkhet, Jumla, Jajarkot, Kalikot, Dailekh

Sub-national Market Nepalgunj, Birendranagar

National Market Pokhara, Kathmandu

 Table 2: Popular Goat breeds in Nepal
Popular Goat Breeds in Nepal

Dominant breed of nepal

Reared in the Terai to the mid-hills
Khari
Capacity to resist common diseases and withstand
climate variation.

Indian origin breed

Jamunapari Common in the hilly region of Nepal

Larger growth potential and relatively larger body size

Indian origin breed

Found in mid-hills and western valleys of Nepal
Sirohi
Certain levels of Sirohi blood has been found mixed
with khari goat

Mountain goats
Sinhal and Reared in mountain districts of Nepal
Chyangra
Places like Jumla and Kalikot

Popular breed of meat

Boer goat farming is slowly gaining popularity in
Boer goat Nepal

Mostly imported from Australia

Demand and supply gap

Being a major delicacy, the demand for goat meat/meat products are high in Nepal, especially during festive season
like Dashain where thousands of goats are sacrificed every year and also during election campaigns where the
candidates lure voters through incentive of providing free meat. Besides, Nepalese people are fond of many varieties
of goat meat dishes like sekuwa (meat roasted in natural wood/log fire), sukuti (dry meat dish), taas (fried goat meat
dish), bhutan (dish made from goat’s gut) and many more.However, Nepal hasn’t yet been self-sufficient in the
production of Goat meat to support the demand. On the hand, Nepal seriously lacks proper technology in rearing,
housing and processing. Whereas, on the other hand, there is not enough storage facilities, clean slaughterhouses,
and proper distribution systems. Adding to that, there is inadequate scientific research on breeding, feeding,
management, and disease control. And, all these scenarios are hindering large scale commercial production in
Nepal.To meet the demand, there is high imports of live goats from India. According to NLTA (Nepal Livestock
Traders Association), two-lakhs live goats enter Nepal every year through checkpoint at Nepalgunj, Krishnanagar
and Bhairahawa. So, looking at the present context, there is a serious urgency of upgrade in technology to gear up
the commercial production process.

Challenges to growth:
The goat meat industry in Nepal is surrounded with several constraints and challenges that needs to be addressed for
the growth of this industry, which are discussed below:

 Lack of proper technology in rearing, breeding and housing management (space, air flow and slot
management).
 No easy access to market information on price, volume traded, market context of live goat/meat to farmers and
traders.
 There is a limited number of goat collection centers in Nepal, and the existing collection centers are of poor
quality lacking reconditioning facility which results weight-loss up to 20% while handling or transporting them
to the distant market.
 Lack of elite flock based goat resource centers that promotes high-quality cross breeding facilities.
 Lack of expertise and efforts in processing activities. For instance, there are very limited slaughterhouses, meat
processing factories and deep fridge/cool centers. Also, the conditions of most of the available
slaughterhouses’ do not meet the standards set by the government under ‘Animal Slaughterhouse and Meat
Inspection Act’.
 Poor effort of loan disbursement by the government and high interest rate in the banking sector are limiting the
farmers from scaling up their production activity.

Opportunities and way forward:

Also, as mentioned below, there exist several opportunities in this industry.

 Private sector led support services such as agro-vets, and related shops have the scope of rendering health
service in the remote parts of the districts.
 Community forestry and public land (leasing for agro forestry) could serve as large resource for feeding
management for a larger scale of goat rearing.
 Road corridors are developing in the remote areas which is supporting easy transportation of live goat/meat to
the distant market.
 For the flow of capital investment to the goat production and trading business, many local co-operatives are
being established in the remote areas with the support from development banks.
To sum up, the demand for goat meat/meat products in Nepal is constantly high and are accepted and consumed by
all communities in Nepal. If the producers and concerned stakeholders adopt better technology and skilled
manpower in production and distribution systems, Nepal could scale up its production in goat meat to meet the
market demand. (This article was prepared with the help of report published by HVAP (High Value Agricultural
Project in Hill and Mountain Areas http://www.hvap.gov.np/notice.php)
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