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There are 2702 registered slaughter houses in the country, which are mostly service oriented performing only slaughtering and dressing. Slaughter houses, besides catering to the needs of consumers, serve as source of raw materials for a wide range of industries such as tanneries, bone mills, gelatine, glues, live stock animal feed processing units and pharmaceuticals. A large number of the slaughter houses are very old and operate with inadequate basic amenities such as lairage, proper flooring and water supply. Live stock available for slaughtering comprises of animals namely, buffaloes, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and poultry. As per the recent data published by the Ministry of Agriculture, live stock population is 84.2 million buffaloes, 204.5 million cattle, 50.8 million sheep, 115.3 million goats, 12.8 million pigs and 307.1 million poultry. In the year 1992-93, meat production was 1.5 million tonnes which increased to 2 million tonnes in 1997-98. State-wise meat production is given in Table 1. West Bengal, Bihar, Delhi and Maharashtra are the states which contribute over 60 per cent of meat production in the country. Table 1: State-wise production of meat
quantity
expressed as thousand tonnes
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