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India to Promote Sex Sorted Insemination of Cows to Boost Milk Output- Minister

New Delhi (Sputnik): India plans to promote the use of "sex-sorted semen" technology to ensure the birth of more female calves to generate more milk and help increase farmers' income, a federal minister said.
Sputnik

In the future, through calves born through insemination, will all be born female with the help of sex-sorted semen, India’s Minister for Animal Husbandry, Dairy and Fisheries Giriraj Singh said.

He announced this novel initiative at the launch of a dairy product in India’s Nagpur city, in western Maharastra over the weekend.

A section of netizens welcomed the minister’s announcement, saying this novel idea should be promoted across the country extensively.

​Another group of netizens responded negatively, saying that the forced artificial insemination of cattle would disturb the ecological balance and adversely affect the quality of milk and allied dairy products.

Cows that stop giving milk will produce at least 20 litres of milk through IV embryo advanced technology, the minister claimed.

He said the government plans to distribute three million doses of sex-sorted semen during fiscal 2019-2020 to achieve the target distribution of 100 million by 2025.

This will result in a cow population of around 100 million, he added.

In March this year, the Indian state of Uttarakhand became the first region in the country to produce sex-sorted semen to enhance birth rates of female calves.

The long-term aim is to create a “cow factory,” Minister Singh said.

 

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