Pakistan's Livestock and Meat Exports: A Large Foundation, a Small Window, and the Test of Time

On a table in a meeting room in Islamabad, the first page of a document carried two figures placed side by side. On one side, roughly 245 million animals. On the other, only USD 530 million. The first is the number of livestock standing in Pakistan's barns and farms. The second is the revenue earned from the country's entire meat exports in fiscal year 2026-26. The vast empty space between these two numbers was the real subject of that meeting. That gap throws up an uncomfortable question: if a country has more than 240 million animals in its sheds, why does it sell only USD 530 million worth of meat a year? The arithmetic does not add up.

This document reached my hands under a strange label. The report was headed with the name of a different sport altogether. I am used to reading match reports, galleries, formations, moments of pressure. But what emerged when I opened the file was an entirely different world: barns, vaccines, cold supply chains, export targets, and a list of attending ministers. If information arrives under the wrong name, that does not mean the story inside it is worthless. More often, the most important accounting hides inside a misfiled folder. This piece is about that accounting.

At a meeting chaired by Pakistan's Prime Minister, a clear directive went out: the country's livestock sector must be recast in a new mould. Two deadlines were attached to it. A plan for eradicating Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) must be submitted within two weeks, and a major leap in exports must be achieved by 2028. The two deadlines look simple. But when you put together 245 million animals, eight million farming families, and a disease spread across a continent, those deadlines become little more than a line drawn on paper.

A vast barn, a small window

One figure is enough to grasp the scale of this sector. The total value of Pakistan's livestock sector is about 5.5 trillion Pakistani rupees. Roughly 14.97 percent of the national economy comes from this single sector, and 63.6 percent of the agricultural economy. These numbers are not for memorising; they are needed to convey a reality. Livestock in Pakistan is not a marginal matter. It is the spine of agriculture.

Every year the country produces about 74.69 million tonnes of milk and about 6.31 million tonnes of meat. In milk, Pakistan ranks among the world's top producers. Yet a large part of this vast output circulates outside any formal accounting, moving straight from farm to local market with no traceability and no quality certification.

Tied to this entire system are roughly eight million rural families. Most are smallholders, running a household on one or two cows or goats. Their hands hold the scale of this sector, and their hands also hold its weakness. Because gathering this scattered production into one place and lifting it to international standards is the real challenge ahead for Pakistan.

Here my own city, Dhaka, comes to mind. Bangladesh's livestock sector is a similarly vast but semi-informal world. Every year, ahead of Eid-ul-Azha, cattle markets spring up across the country, backed by a whole year's labour of millions of farming families. After the sacrifice, another industry begins from the hides. But turning milk and meat into an organised, certified, internationally standardised export product is something Bangladesh has not fully managed, and Pakistan has not yet managed either. The problem in both countries is nearly identical: production exists, processing and certification lag.

One more name belongs on this list: India. Among the world's major buffalo-meat exporters, India has stayed near the top for years, especially in Gulf and Southeast Asian markets. India's livestock is also smallholder-driven and also faces disease problems, but it is ahead of Pakistan in export adaptation and slaughterhouse infrastructure. So Pakistan's problem lies not only in its resources but in its skill at moving those resources to market.

A list of announcements and a chain full of locks

The core message of this policy is clear: to organise a vast but unused resource through state intervention, so that the animals in the barn are converted into export dollars. Now let us see what machinery has been installed along this conversion path, and where the locks are fixed.

Duty-free imports, corporate farms and tagging

The first decision was to permit duty-free imports of superior livestock breeds. The logic behind it is simple: the meat-producing capacity of domestic breeds is not enough to meet international market demand, so better breeds must be brought in from outside. But this decision is itself an admission, that there is a deficit in domestic breeding capacity.

The second decision was to cast the sector in a corporate mould. Instead of a crowd of small farmers, certified, commercial, export-oriented farms built on feedlots. The aim is quality control, because no international buyer will purchase meat of uneven quality.

The third is a modern livestock tagging system. Every animal must be given an identity, so that its journey from farm to port can be traced. Without this traceability, entering the international market is now almost impossible. Nor is that all: tagging has another purpose, ensuring that superior breeds imported duty-free cannot simply blend into the country and become indistinguishable.

One thing must be said plainly here: the combination of import-dependent breeding and tagging points toward a kind of enclave arrangement, where imported animals are reared only for export while domestic smallholders stand outside the current. How sustainable that is remains a separate question.

In the modern world, many countries are now moving such traceability systems toward digital ledgers, so that every step of an animal's life, from birth to port, is recorded in a tamper-resistant way. If Pakistan's tagging system remains merely paper documentation, that advantage of tamper-resistance and quality assurance will be lost. Whatever the technology, the real question is who will do the monitoring, and how independently that data will be verified.

FMD: the lock that keeps every door shut

The most important part of the whole policy is here. Foot-and-Mouth Disease is a highly contagious viral disease of livestock. Where the disease exists, developed countries impose strict bans on meat imports from that source. In Pakistan's case, the disease has been described explicitly as the major impediment.

The Prime Minister has directed that a plan for FMD eradication be submitted within two weeks. Here a gap opens between reality and expectation. By the rules of veterinary epidemiology, eradicating this disease from a country takes years: vaccination, surveillance, quarantine, international recognition. What is possible in two weeks is writing a plan, not eradicating a disease.

So when the plan is drafted on paper, the real question will be its implementation. And on that implementation path sits the biggest lock of all: international recognition of disease-free zones or compartments. Because to enter the international market, one's own declaration is not enough. A disease-free zone recognised by an international body is required.

There is a strategic intelligence here. Making the whole country disease-free overnight may be impossible, but declaring specific areas or biosecure production units disease-free is feasible. So the real test of the plan will be recognition of these compartments, not waiting on the whole country.

Certification, Halal and third-party validation

Here lies the most mature signal of this policy. The government did not stop at domestic certification; it spoke of internationally standard slaughterhouse certification and independent third-party validation. That means self-issued certificates will not do; an outside party must come and verify.

This decision itself admits something: domestic certification is not trusted by international buyers. Hence external validation is needed.

Alongside it stands Halal certification. Since the bulk of Pakistan's exports go to Muslim-majority Gulf countries, Halal certification is an indispensable condition. That certification system is still being built.

The cold supply chain and de-boned meat

Once an animal leaves the slaughterhouse, it must be sustained within a cold supply chain: temperature-controlled vehicles, storage, uninterrupted cold all the way to the port. A single break in this chain spoils the entire consignment. Without this chain, meat exports to developed markets are practically impossible.

There is also the question of value addition: de-boned meat, cut and portioned meat, packaging. Processed meat commands a far higher price than raw meat. Much of Pakistan's current output is raw. This step of value addition is where the real profit lies.

Markets: from the Gulf to Malaysia and China

Pakistan's current meat exports are concentrated mainly in the Gulf: the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar. This concentration is a risk. A problem in one market jolts the entire export stream.

So new names have appeared as expansion targets: Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and China. Among these, the name of China is significant. China imposes extremely strict conditions on livestock disease. Naming China as a target market implies an admission that disease-free status is assumed to be achievable. That is no easy task.

The gate in the value chain: where it is stuck

If the entire supply chain is lined up, we see breeding and smallholders at the upper end, slaughterhouses, certification and the cold chain in the middle, and export markets at the lower end. The narrowest point of this line is the middle. In other words, the problem is not production but processing and certification. That is where all the state's attention is concentrated.

But a question hangs over this line. If the middle gate is being built for corporate, export-oriented farms, where will the eight million smallholder families stand? Will this corporate mould lift them up, or bypass them? The report offers no answer.

Read together, Gulf concentration and disease-free status create a structure. Today's USD 530 million of exports go mainly to the Gulf, because Gulf market conditions are relatively easier. Entering higher-value markets such as Malaysia or China requires disease-free status. That means the entire future of the policy is tied to a conditional door: if it opens, a big leap; if not, staying stuck in the Gulf.

The gap between announcement and delivery

The real test of any state policy is not in its announcement but in its delivery. The very structure of this report signals something: it is heavy on announcement and light on delivery. Directives were issued, a plan was called for, an expansion was urged. Such sentences recur in the report. Each sentence expresses an intention, not a result.

Several specific risks live inside this announcement-delivery gap, and they need to be seen one by one.

First comes the question of the deadline. That two-week timeline is political, not scientific. Two weeks for planning the eradication of an epidemic disease, and several years to actually eradicate it: many do not wish to grasp the difference. The deadline is good for political optics, but the pathogen does not obey deadlines.

Next comes the question of the eight million smallholder families. This vast population is in fact the owner of this sector, yet it is nearly invisible in the language of the policy. A corporate export-farm model may leave smallholders outside rather than lifting them up. Then export dollars will rise, but how much of that benefit reaches the lower tier is a question. The history of international development policy holds many examples where large corporate farms arose while small producers became more marginalised.

Then there is centre-province coordination. The responsibility for the policy has fallen on the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, which must coordinate with the provinces. But the report makes no mention of the provinces' positions or consent. In Pakistan's context, centre-province coordination is a frequently failing point. This silence leaves an uncertainty behind.

Another gap is the absence of cost figures. The report contains no budget, financing or expenditure numbers. Vaccines, tagging systems, cold chains, certification: all of these require enormous money. Without knowing where the money will come from, success cannot be calculated.

Attached to this is the long-term risk of duty-free import dependency. Duty-free imports of superior breeds may, over the long run, create a dependency rather than building domestic breeding capacity. If imported breeds become the very foundation of exports, this is in fact an enclave arrangement, not the development of a sector across the country.

And above all stands one big point: this report comes from a single official source. There is no independent expert opinion, no opposing view, no verification. So what it states is what the government is saying, not what the government has achieved. That distinction matters. The distance between the statement of a government meeting and a verified outcome is the most important warning of this piece.

There is a larger lesson in this whole accounting. Pakistan's problem is not a lack of resources but a lack of converting resources into value. A 5.5-trillion-rupee sector exports only about USD 530 million a year: enormous domestic consumption, but a thin presence in international markets. This gap alone tells us the problem is not demand but capacity.

But it would be a mistake to view this capacity deficit only through the lens of infrastructure and certification. Behind a capacity deficit lie unequal competition, weak organisation, and an information system where intermediaries profit more and producers less. Had the file that reached me truly been known by the name of a sport, perhaps no one would have looked at this accounting. The real story can hide behind the wrong name. That is what this document taught me.

The signals to watch

Pakistan's success or failure in this policy will be determined by a few specific signals. The first signal is international recognition of disease-free zones. If it comes, the doors to advanced markets will open; if not, every target will stay stuck on paper. The second signal is the approval of the first internationally validated slaughterhouse. The third is whether the export figure genuinely rises above USD 530 million. The fourth is whether the first significant consignment leaves for Malaysia or China beyond the Gulf.

Read together, these signals form a picture. Pakistan holds a vast asset: a 5.5-trillion-rupee sector, 245 million animals, eight million families. But the gap between the size of the asset and the income from it is not filled by announcements; it is filled by delivery, year after year.

That mislabelled file that reached me was in fact a fitting memorial. The distance between what a nation stores in its barns and what it exports from its ports is the measure of its economic maturity. Pakistan's accounting remains unfinished. The question lingers: that vast barn which has supplied milk and meat year after year, when will it finally receive its fair price?