According to Utusan Malaysia, GTR deputy president Nordin Mat said JPV needed to revise all its policies because it had failed to bring any positive development, especially in the field of cattle and goat livestock farming in the last 10 years.
He said the department should be helping the development of the entire national ruminant industry instead of just supervising and administering matters related to veterinary services.
“The National Agrofood Policy 2.0 launched earlier this year by the agriculture and food industry ministry is mere rhetoric. It has no chance of increasing the self-sufficiency level (SSL) of beef to 50% over the next five years,” he said.
Nordin also said the SSL figure of 23% from JPV was also far from the real target.
“Only imported and smuggled livestock from abroad meets the needs and demands of the country, especially for the purpose of aqiqah and sacrifice.
“JPV enforces rules based on policies that make life difficult for farmers, not the development of the industry,” he said.
He was commenting on a report by Utusan Malaysia yesterday about a cattle farmer, Gulam Manaver Mobarak Ali, who had faced many obstacles in 26 years of cattle farming.
He claimed that there was a “little Napoleon” in the government agency who had hindered cattle breeding efforts to achieve SSL.
Nordin said JPV needed to review various “troublesome policies”, such as the SOPs for the transfer of livestock between states which was complicated for farmers despite the implementation of an e-permit system.
He said the SOPs on disease control needed to be changed because they were actually not able to control disease, including the SOPs for importing livestock medicine which was not preferred by JPV.
He also said the uncontrolled issuance of permits to import poultry and meat could kill local farmers and the industry indirectly.
“The industry is heading towards extinction because of the current situation and the combination of additional factors, such as rising food costs, livestock supplies and labour.
“The country will continue to be dependent on imported livestock from India, Australia and Latin America, which is also becoming more expensive,” he said.
He said the GTR also requested the intervention of Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob to control the ceiling price of palm kernel cake (PKC) feed, allocate the appropriate PKC quota to local farmers and not only focus on foreign markets.