Pig farming to be encouraged: minister

The Punjab government has set up a state-of-the-art 'Nucleus Farm' at Nabha for supplying parent stock for piglet production, the state Animal Husbandry Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu said today.

About 4,000 piglets are being supplied to farmers for setting up new pig units annually, he said.

Sidhu said to enhance the annual income of farmers under the agricultural diversification programme, the state government had launched several initiatives to boost productivity as well as the quality of pig farms.

"The production of pork meat in the state has gone up, from 0.96 thousand tonnes (2016-17) to 1.02 thousand tonnes in 2017-18," he said in an official release.

We have around 817 organised pig farms in the state which have 26,000 pigs, he said.

Sidhu said the total population of pigs in Punjab is around 60,000 and now, the department is working in the direction of scientific improvement to increase the population of pigs to meet the demand of the national as well as international markets.

"To enhance the productivity and quality of pigs, a modern semen bank is also being established for scientific breeding at Nabha which will prove to be a game changer to enhance productivity of pig farms," he added.

Our aim is to produce high quality and disease less pork for the consumers from all over world, he said.