A New Project to Produce Algerian Meat for International Markets
Photo: archive
General Manager of the National Company for the Red Meat Production expressed his willingness to reach a final agreement between the company that represents the industrial slaughterhouses which belong to the company, and farmers in coordination with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, to work within a strategic plan that allows the achievement of raising the national production ratio of the Division of meat by the beginning of 2016, and to ensure controlling the price to break speculation during the feasts, with the intensification of production to cover the local deficit and reduce the bill of importing frozen meat.
Production quantity is expected to reach more than 40,000 tons per year after the start of the industrial slaughterhouses which belong to the Algerian Red Meat Company.
The speaker said on the sidelines of the open day on the occasion of inaugurating the regional company “Hassi Bahbah” in Djelfa (Southern Algiers), at a time when the company is working on a dialogue with farmers to provide support and find solutions to the obstacles which they face because they are the primary source upon which the company’s production is relying, and which aspires through it to reach the global markets.
Farmers and ranchers will have a chance to become businessmen, according to the spokesman, “The company scheduled a number of meetings with farmers and gave attention to their problems, particularly the fiscal and banking obstacles”.
“The four slaughterhouses which that have been completed in Hassi Bahbah, Djelfa and Ain Mlila in Oum Bouaki (eastern Algeria), Bouktab in Bayadh , for slaughtering, skinning and distribution of meat, will start to work extensively during 2016.”
In this context, the Chairman of the National Federation of Farmers asked for preparing a book of conditions before any agreement, that guarantees the rights of cattlemen and allows the codification of the relationship between them and the National Company for Meat Production, especially in regard to the problems of taxes and some administrative files which are not of their powers, but they considered them as barriers that impede the work of cattlemen in raising production.
They also pointed out that the feed and barley quantity which they receive at subsidized prices by the state is not enough often to feed livestock, forcing them to resort sometimes to sell their livestock, even at low prices to avoid losses despite the abundance that is recorded in the recent period, which was estimated at more than 26 million heads of sheep annually.