The diversified Pailan Group, which is into education, food processing, entertainment and township development, is now getting into goat rearing to feed a modern slaughterhouse it set up recently.
The group is eyeing an export market for goat meat, as it claims that the prized Black Bengal variety that it will process helps in normal digestion and has low cholesterol and fat levels.
According to Apurba Saha, founder chairman of the group, there is a demand for this kind of goat meat in the world. The Black Bengal variety thrives on green fodder and is available mostly in the eastern part of India.
Overall, West Bengal has the country’s largest goat population, nearly 19 million, according to the 17 th Indian Livestock Census.
“We have entered into partnerships with the zilla parishads in Birbhum and Purulia, which provide the sheds for the goats,” he told FE. The goats are being reared by self help groups (SHGs), which hand over the animals after 14 months and are paid the cash equivalent of half the body weight of the anima.
During the rearing, Pailan provides the medicines and food for animals. By next month, Pailan would expand the rearing programme to Hooghly and then to other districts.
Pailan would begin selling the processed and frozen meat within a year. At the national level, the meat would be priced at Rs 300 per kg and at the international level the equivalent of Rs 500 per kg.
“This project can generate employment for about 25,000 SHGs catering to approximately 2.5 lakh people in West Bengal,” said Saha.
Pailan will also open a breeding centre in Jharkhand by next month for the Black Bengal variety.
The group has set up a slaughterhouse at a cost of Rs 40 crore in Hooghly, with imported machinery and the best practices but cannot operate it till it has a large enough stock to begin with.
The slaughterhouse can process 300 goats an hour, “so if the slaughter house is open for eight hours a day we need 2,400 goats a day and around 72,000 goats a month,” he told FE.