Trade Barriers for Animal and Animal Products in India
Simply trade barriers are policies that restrict international trade. Once the government applies a trade restriction, it leads to a price increment of traded products. Tariffs and export taxes are some of the trade barriers. When it comes to the trade of agricultural commodities such as animals, animal products, and fruits and vegetables 2 main objectives can be identified. One such is to protect local farmers and the other special objective is to stop/minimize the disease spread among countries/regions.
Protect local farmers
In India, there is a diversified production of agricultural commodities. When considering the world scenario, for many Agricultural commodities India leads by production.
Example: World largest milk producer
World’s largest buffalo population (108.7 million)
If the government allows importing these Agricultural commodities without any restriction, only importers will be rich, not the local farmers. Farmers won’t get an appropriate value for their products and the local farmers will feel frustrated. So they will tend to leave from farming. To stop this migration and protect local farmers, the government has to implement trade restrictions. These restrictions will leads to the good for the Indian economy.
Stop/minimize the disease spread
The diseases that are afraid of being spread among countries and regions are called “Trans-boundary Animal Diseases”.
Foot and mouth disease (FMD), Peste Des Petits Ruminants (PPR), Haemorrhagic Septicemia (HS), Classical Swine Fever (CSF), Newcastle Disease (ND), Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), and sheep & goat Pox are the major trans-boundary animal diseases in India. If these diseases spread to a new region or country it will cause serious socio-economic and public health consequences. So it is really important to restrict the trade to minimize the spread of disease.
For that India has introduced non-tariff regulations under three categories as follows.
Banned or prohibited items – tallow, fat, and oils of animal origin
Restricted items ( require import license) - Livestock products and certain chemicals
Canalized items – Bulk agricultural products(grains, vegetable oils) and pharmaceuticals
If you want to export and import restricted items, you need to obtain a license for that via the DGFT website.
Click here to download Export License for restricted items
When exporting and importing animals and animal-based products, it is important to carefully ascertain about import/export restrictions of your trade partner. You have to have a thorough idea about what you are going to export/import and what kind of diseases present in that particular country/region.