Sheep provided by local livestock farms for the subsidised meat initiative during the month of Ramadan.
Doha: Local livestock farms have supplied nearly 10,000 sheep to a joint initiative to provide subsidised meat to citizens during the holy month of Ramadan, marking huge success of national food security programme.
The initiative was launched under the campaign to promote local products supporting the farm owners to encourage the products, said the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) in a statement.
The Animal Resources Department of MME, in collaboration with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) and Widam Food Company, has received 9,801 local sheep from owners of Qatari farms out of 30,000 sheep registered under the initiative. The technical team received the sheep to ensure they met health standards.
MoCI had launched the initiative to ensure the availability of meat to citizens at subsidised rates during Ramadan, and to create a balance between supply and demand in the market.
The ministry had agreed with Widam Food Company to provide 30,000 local and imported cattle, to sell their meat at subsidised prices for citizens (at a rate of two sheep per citizen).
The credit of fast-growing livestock market of Qatar goes to the Strategic Food Security Projects 2019-23 of the Ministry of Municipality an Environment (MME) which aim at increasing self-sufficiency rate of fresh local products.
The strategy eyes to increase local production of red meat from 18 percent in 2019 to 30 percent in 2023. Under the strategy, many new projects have been launched for raising and fattening cattle.
The livestock market has been recorded among the fast growing sectors in the country. According to the statistics released by MME's Livestock Affairs Department in September 2020, the number of animals including camels, sheep, cows and goats reached a total of 1,707,547.
As many as 1.2 million heads of livestock were recorded in the national register of livestock for farmed animals for economic purpose by the end of August 2016.
The latest figures show that number of camels in the country reached 131,080. The total number of sheep stood at 1,094,217, followed by goats at 441,279. The number of cows reached 40,971. The livestock register also recorded 17,866 farmers for animals operating across the country.
