Dairy farmers in Maharashtra want Aadhaar like ID tags for milch animals

Mumbai: With slaughter of bulls and bullocks being banned, a section of dairy farmers in Maharashtra have mooted the idea of giving milch animals ID tags on the lines of ‘Aadhar’ cards to track their history, breeding cycle and economics of milk production. [caption id=“attachment_2200678” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Dairy farm, representational Image. Reuters.[/caption] State Dairy Development Minister Eknath Khadse said while the government has not received any formal proposal from dairy farmers as yet, but it will look into the demand if the proposal will help them. “We have not got any proposal from the dairy farmers as yet. If we get a proposal, we will study it and if we find that the farmers stand to benefit, we do not mind accepting it,” Khadse told PTI. The dairy farmers want the government to consider it seriously as this has been done in most countries that practice advanced dairy farming methods. “The most important benefit of UID number tagging is that it will enable to track the overall production pattern of cows, which is very important from business and planning point of view,” Prabhat Dairy’s Managing Director Vivek Nirmal said. “We help farmers in Maharashtra to buy cows through financial assistance schemes from financial institutions. The cows are insured and therefore UID for each cow is very important. The data of each cow is also stored on a ‘cloud’ (data storing software). The data can be used by the lending banks too to keep track of the cows.” Nirmal said his unit has already started tagging over 3,000 cows in Shrirampur and Ahmednagar - one of the largest milk producing districts in India. PTI