India has informed Pakistan that its trade rules and regulations do not permit to export or sell live animals in large numbers to any country, official sources told Business Recorder on Sunday.
They said that Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Live Stock (Minfal) had made arrangements to import live animals, like cows, buffaloes, sheep etc from India through land route to meet its ever-growing population's meat/beef requirements, but Indian officials refused to entertain its request on the grounds that its trade rules did not permit to export live animals.
However, Indian officials suggested that Pakistan Foreign Office should approach Indian Foreign Office for signing a new memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the import of live animals so that the concerned Indian Departments could amend the rules.
Sources said that with the start of trade between Pakistan and India through land route after almost five decades, Pakistan government has made quarantine arrangements at Wagah border and finalised other modalities to import live animals from India by public sector to control the price hike of mutton/beef/chicken items.
Market sources said that two or three private parties were currently importing about 30 tons frozen buffalo meat in a month from India, which is mainly used in hotels and restaurants of Karachi. They opined that cow is a sacred animal in the Hindu religion and its slaughter had caused frequent communal riots in India, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the subcontinent's history. Therefore, the official export of cows to Pakistan for slaughtering might cause some social and political vibrations in religious circles.
They recalled that there had been large-scale smuggling of animals from India during past 58 years which kept the mutton/beef prices low, but after laying barbed wire on border by India, the smuggling of animals had stopped, causing the present price hike in Pakistan. They said that after failure of the government to control prices of essential and kitchen items, like wheat flour, sugar, mutton, beef, chicken, potato, garlic etc, Pakistan reluctantly decided last month to import these items from India. Sources opined that because of growing population, degradation of natural resources like subsoil water and environment, hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile lands purchased by housing societies, costly agricultural inputs, low yield of crops, lack of sustainable and workable policy planning by the governments, Pakistan has to heavily depend on other countries for food items.
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