ground and Justification
Recently, several large scale meat processing abattoirs have been established in
Ethiopia in response to the emerging meat export opportunities to the Middle East and
North African Countries. There are also several meat export abattoirs under construction
and more are planned to be established in the near future in different regions of the
country. These developments are in the right direction toward diversifying and increasing
Ethiopia’s foreign exchange earnings and improving the livelihoods of livestock
producers and other actors engaged in the livestock related activities.
However, one of the major challenges facing the meat export abattoirs has been
that the competitiveness of these firms in the domestic and export markets has been
limited by the underutilization of their meat processing capacities. It has been observed
that the live animal throughput is inadequate and as a result the existing meat processing
facilities operate at less than 50% of their operational capacities. This is apparently due to
inadequate supply of the required quality live animals for meat processing by the export
abattoirs. The export abattoirs are competing for the domestic supply of live cattle and
shoats with the demand for live animals for domestic consumption, and for formal and
informal (cross-border) trade.