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Four new products for poultry industry
With almost 95% of the domestic cattle population dependent on grass and fodder, animal nutritional health products have a conservatively estimated market of over Rs 350 crore. And tapping into this now is Venky's India (VIL), the diversified poultry company of the Rs 600 crore Venkateshwar Hatcheries (VHL) group. VIL has entered into a business association with the US based Altech BioTechnologies to market four of the latter's animal nutritional products from May. The four products are mycosorb, selpelex, biomos and allzyme vegpro. The proposed research centre will focus on 'in vio' (Phase I trials) research and applications research for animal nutritional products. The focus is to get microbial feed additives for animals since the nutritional health of Indian animals is poor. These biotech products are naturally grown fermented feed products and have not been genetically manipulated. The business association between VIL and Altech extends to the NHP division as well, with the launch of two health products, one for diabetics and the other for arthritis.
While we are busy with kargil and electronics, world was shocked since the news was broke about live stock in Belgium, which had received fed containing high levels of dioxin. Stories about salmonella poisoning and poor welfare are not new. Now it is cancer consumers all over the world has lost faith in the nutritive value of eggs and meat and consumption has dropped by 50%. This figure of 50% has taken from the editorial of World poultry a magazine on production processing and marketing and not from a sundry organization promoting vegetarism. The editorial points out that many products could not even sell their eggs or birds. Huge amount of eggs and poultry meat had to be destroyed the birds, which were too big for incineration plants, were killed and dumped in pits. Thailand along with Malaysia China, Philipines, Hongkong, South Korea and Taiwan were quick. They banned import of meat and dairy products from Belgium as well as from Germany, France and the Netherland. The loss to the Belgium poultry industry is estimated at one billion Euro. Now the story. How did it happen? A load of animal fat contaminated with recycle transformer oil was delivered by a Belgium company Forga in Betrix, Belgium. Eventhough the company was aware of the dioxin in fat, and yet they processed it. Initial investigation h revealed that 80 tonnes of fat produced by Verkest was sold o 12 feed manufactures. The batch contained dioxin more than 1500 times the legal limit. The batch is sufficient to feed 16 million chickens for one day. Even though the feed was made in Jan’99 and that the chickens feed on it are consumed by May’99, the scare still remains in the atmosphere, because dioxin persists in body fat, small doses may not cause cancer but can harm immune system especially in young children. People at risk should be identified now and followed medically for next ten years! What is there in it for us? We must be aware of the facts, how authorities in developed countries try to hide information instead of taking immediate action. If this is their concern for their own this people, how they will behave if the feed or poultry was sold in India where laboratories are lacking in equipments and general public is lacking awareness? It is worthwhile noting that in these days of global village, a single man at the processor’s factory can cause a havoc in the whole world just to get rid of small quantity of insufficient item like used transformer oil. It is worthwhile taking a view of world meat industry in recent times. On one hand, consumers are demanding quality products at lower prices and on the other hand production costs are increasing particularly costs of feed are increasing. Soil the margins are diminishing Indian Poultry is not an exception. There is a smell of import of feed as the raw material prices have increased. Given the uncertain political situations are general lack of awareness about food safety guess, what you will eat tomorrow. |
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