Pakistan poultry industry seeks 10-year tax holiday

The poultry industry has asked President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to start eating chickens at public meetings to give a message to the nation that poultry products are still safe to eat.


This move, it added, was likely to reinstate consumers’ confidence in chicken products almost shattered by media reports of a possible pandemic in the wake of spread of H5N1 virus through human to human contact.


The poultry industry in Pakistan is sinking and people are leaving the business with huge losses and no apparent signs of any compensation from the government. Fifty per cent of the poultry farms in the country have so far been closed.


Over 1.2m people were associated with the poultry industry and security of their livelihood was the duty of the government, the industry argues.


Chickens comprise 45% of the overall meat consumption of the country. If people stop eating chicken products this would greatly increase demand for mutton and beef and the country would be unable to produce animals with such a ratio owing to which it would only rely on imported meet from other countries, including India and Iran.