India’s beef exporters lobby, appeal against cattle trade ban

Photo: Butchers stand outside their shops selling beef in Munnar, Kerala, India on 30 October, 2016. Sixpixx/Shutterstock.com

*Corrects the name of the Hyderabad-based lawyer, who also runs the All India Jamiatul Quresh Action Committee, from Faheem Khan to Faheem Qureshi

With $ 4.3 billion of beef exports at stake, industry leaders seek the removal of buffalo from the ban notification

India’s beef exporters are scrambling to lobby and appeal against a government ban on the trade of cattle for slaughter, which threatens to disrupt their supply chains and bring $4.3 billion worth of exports to a crashing halt.

Exporters are asking the government to exclude buffalo from the list of cattle prohibited from being sold for slaughter at animal markets, since the Indian government allows export only of buffalo meat, which is classified as beef in the world meat market.

“If they are doing it for cattle [cows, bulls and bullocks] then we have no reservations because their meat is not exported anyway. But if you include buffalo in the cattle definition, then it is wrong, both technically and biologically. This will affect the beef exports severely,” said Dr. Surendra Kumar Ranjhan, director of Mirha Exports Pvt. Ltd, which processes and exports frozen buffalo meat products. Dr Ranjhan says buffalo and cattle are biologically different species.

Mirha Exports has an integrated abattoir-cum-processing facility in the northern state of Punjab, with a processing capacity of 150 metric tonnes (MT) of meat per day, and two units in Uttar Pradesh state with processing capacity of 60 MT per day.

“We have suggested the government to remove buffalo from that list. That will serve the purpose,” D.B. Sabharwall, secretary-general of the All India Meat and Livestock Exporters’ Association, told Salaam Gateway.

“We’ve had a meeting with Environment Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, who has assured us the government will consider our cause,” added Sabharwall.

The industry body wants to keep engaging with the government through discussion to resolve the issue, and has chosen not to take the legal route as of now.

“We don’t want to fight with the government,” said Sabharwall, who is also a senior executive with Allanasons Pvt. Ltd., one of India’s leading beef exporters.

“But if the policy continues, there will be hardly 10 to 20 percent of [last year’s level of] export. And this will also lead to a large number of workers being laid off,” Sabharwall said.

Allanasons is among the 80-odd government-approved meat processing and exporting companies that directly employ close to 150,000 people.

Overall, India has about 2.2 million people employed in the cattle slaughter business directly or indirectly.

LEGAL BATTLE

While the industry association is chary about taking the fight to the courts, petitions challenging the ban have been filed in at least two High Courts.

On May 30, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court ordered a stay on implementation of the ban for four weeks, and the Kerala High Court has dismissed a similar petition on the grounds there was no need for the judiciary to interfere with the federal government’s decision as it did not violate any law or provision in the Constitution.

Lawyer Ajmal Khan, who argued the case before the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court, told Salaam Gateway the judgment is applicable throughout India. “It’s a central legislation. Once a central legislation is stayed by any one the country’s High Courts, it’s applied throughout India,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hyderabad-based lawyer Faheem Qureshi has filed a petition before the country’s Supreme Court.

“We are awaiting a date for a hearing,” said Qureshi, who also runs the All India Jamiatul Quresh Action Committee, a welfare organisation for meat traders and butchers.

It’s not clear yet whether the government’s notification will survive the test of legal scrutiny, but until then the meat industry continues to live in fear of losing business.

INDUSTRY-WIDE REPERCUSSIONS

“If this ban, which includes buffalo meat, is implemented in letter and spirit throughout the country, the whole meat industry will crumble. Exports will come down to zero,” Mirha Exports’ Dr. Ranjhan told Salaam Gateway.

Mirha, which exports beef to 50 countries including China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, as well as to Middle Eastern, and African nations, reported a net profit of 200 million Indian rupees ($3.1 million) on revenues of 10 billion rupees in the financial year from April 2016 to March 2017.

According to the livestock census, last conducted in 2012, India has a population of more than 190.90 million cattle and 108.7 million buffaloes.

Cattle is part of India’s traditional rural economy in which farmers generally sell their aging animals at mandis (livestock markets) and put that money back into buying productive animals that can be used for milking or ploughing.

Although the government’s new ruling only prohibits selling cattle for slaughter at animal markets – people are still allowed to buy cattle for slaughter directly from farmers – meat processing companies that source 90 percent of their procurement from mandis say it’s virtually impossible for them to go and buy animals from individual farmers.

“If we don’t get the animals, you can’t expect us to run from pillar to post and farmer to farmer. That’s not possible because one farmer is here and another is a kilometre away,” said Sabharwall of Allanasons, adding that the company generally procures animals through aggregators who buy animals on its behalf from the markets and bring them to its slaughterhouses.

“If we lose the 90 percent of our procurement, what will happen to the trade? We will have to go door-to-door to buy the animals. This will increase costs and is also impractical,” he said. 

Allanasons, which has meat processing plants in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, has a diverse basket of products in the frozen food category.

The company sells to Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East, all of which contributed approximately 99 percent of its total sales of 109 billion rupees and profit of 1.44 billion rupees in the financial year 2016-17.

CATTLE ON THE STREETS

Exporters fear the ban will affect all stakeholders in the supply chain, including the farmer, who would be left with no option but to abandon unproductive animals on the streets. 

According to the livestock census, India already has more than 5.2 million stray cattle – many of them often found wandering the streets of urban areas. The ruling is expected to exacerbate this problem. 

“Our competitors like Australia and Brazil are celebrating this notification because we hold more than 20 percent share of the world’s beef export market. They know if this regulation is implemented, we won’t be able to export, and they will be able to tap into this market share quite easily,” said Sabharwall.

“We already have export orders to be processed for the remaining months of 2017. How do we meet those orders?” he added.

While Allanasons and Mirha Exports are the leaders of the industry, small and mid-sized exporters too are facing the heat.

“More than 50 percent of our business has already been affected after the Maharashtra [state] government banned cattle slaughter, not including buffalo, in 2015. The new ruling will have a further negative impact,” said Imran Shaikh, owner of Ha Musa & Company, which has three processing plants in Maharashtra’s Mumbai, Latur and Nagpur, employing close to 175 people each.

The new trend of ‘cow vigilantism’, which puts the people engaged in the cattle trade at the receiving end of threats and violence from anyone who considers themselves an “upholder of law”, is also scaring people away from this business.

“People are leaving this business because of this threat. Many people have already gone into the goat and chicken business. This is also affecting the numbers, and you will see the impact in the next financial year,” said Shaikh.

(1 Indian rupee = $0.0155)

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