1.25 crore sacrificial animals ready

Reza Mahmud :
One crore 25 lakh sacrificial animals are ready for sale in the cattle markets across the country before the upcoming Eid-ul-Azha.
Cattle farmers are determined to provide sufficient number of sacrificial animals at reasonable prices.
Meanwhile, they expressed anxiety over number of cows smuggling from neighboring India and Myanmar through borders.
The cattle farmers urged the government to take urgent and strict measures to stop cow smuggling.

“The cattle farmers are rearing cows and other animals with utmost care, love and affection targeting to sell those in the sacrificial animals markets before Eid-ul-Azha. They have a right to get the proper price of their animals. But the dishonest traders are smuggling cows through borders to harm the cattle farmers market,” Mohammad Imran Hossain, President of Bangladesh Dairy Farmers’ Association (BDFA) told The New Nation on Monday.
“The price of our animals must would be reasonable. The customers would not be afraid of price hike as the number of sacrificial animal in our stock is larger than the demand,” Imran Hossain said.
He said that there are one crore and 25 lakh cattle are in stock in the farms and houses of the farmers to be sold during the Eid-ul-Azha, while, about 99 lakh of the animals had been sacrificed in last year.
“So, it can be said that the supply of the animals are seemed much more than the demands. As a result, as per the formula of supply and demand ratio, the price would be reasonable,” the BDFA President said.
The leaders and members of the BDFA said referring to news reports published in different daily news papers in recent days that smugglers are bringing numbers of cows from the two neighboring countries. They said that such activities should be prevented as it would very harmful for the country’s cattle farms in long terms.

“Especially, you see, the size of the cows came from Myanmar, are very small. It would not be competitive for the big cattle farms cows but would be harm the little farmers who rear the domestic animal with hard labour round the year,” Imran Hossain said.

He said the government should protect the interest of the country’s small and medium cattle farmers as well.
They said the high ups of the government should monitor the borders activities strictly besides, the BGB also should check the border sternly.
Meanwhile, Dr. Nahid Rashid, Secretary of the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock said, “There are sufficient number of sacrificial animals are in stock in the farms of our country. So we need not import any cattle from abroad.”
She said the ministry is keeping close contact with the home affairs ministry and BGB so that the cow smuggling through the borders can be prevented strictly.
Meanwhile, officials of the ministry said that Fisheries and Livestock Minister SM Rejaul Karim will brief the media details about the number of cattle in the country on Tuesday in the ministry.