THERE is a shortage of goats locally due to the continued ban on imports from the United States and Canada, according to Derrick Vermont, President of the Goat Breeders Association of Jamaica. Vermont told the Sunday Observer yesterday that although he was in full support of the ban, it was causing several setbacks to the local goat-rearing industry.

“It (the ban) has had a very great effect on the development of the industry in Jamaica because we need new blood types, new gene pools, new everything. And the only way to do this is to import and keep on importing,” Vermont said.

“We say we need 2.5 million animals to make Jamaica self-sufficient in goat meat, right now we are at 500,000. The only way we can improve quickly is to import,” he said.

The Ministry of Agriculture’s veterinary division implemented the ban last year after it was discovered that several farms in the United States and Canada, from which Jamaica imported goats, were not fully compliant with programmes to prevent the spread of scrapie among sheep and goats. Scrapie is a fatal, degenerative neurological disease affecting the central nervous system of sheep and goats.

Vermont said the association “had no problem” with the ban “because any animal that comes into Jamaica must come under some scrutiny, and we have the greatest respect for the Veterinary Division”.

However, he pointed out that goat breeders were nonetheless being seriously hampered.

And while they had the option to import the animals from other farms in the world, particularly Australia, the cost associated with this was discouraging for many farmers, Vermont told the Sunday Observer.

“We could import from Australia right now – tomorrow morning – but the price to bring in that goat would be too exorbitant,” he said.

Vermont said the Goat Breeders Association had already been forced to forgo $20 million in funding from the Ministry of Agriculture because of the ban.

“We were to get $20 million funding [from the Ministry of Agriculture] for bringing in goats, which would have helped tremendously. But because we couldn’t bring in the goats we had to forfeit that. Even if the ministry gave us the $20 million we would have to be buying from ourselves. All we would be doing is transporting goats from one parish to another,” he said.

Vermont is, however, hopeful that the ban will be lifted on some farms in the United States and Canada by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, Vermont praised the efforts of the Veterinary Services Division in preventing the spread of debilitating diseases among local goats.

“Some time around in the near future people might want to import goats from us cause these are the only disease-free goats in the world. Lets keep it this way,” he said.