AS chicken prices surge, president of the Small Ruminants Association of Jamaica Trevor Bernard is encouraging more Jamaicans to give rabbit meat a try.

Speaking in an interview with the Jamaica Observer, Bernard noted that “rabbit production and rabbit meat have huge potential to make a small impact on the whole meat production side of our country.”

According to a research paper prepared by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture & Fisheries Agricultural Services Unit in July 2014, “rabbit meat is high in protein, low in fat, contains less than half the calories of pork. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), rabbit is the most nutritious meat known to man.”

The research highlighted that the most frequent farm gate prices for rabbit meat are $1,540 and $1,760 per kilogramme with the cost of production for rabbit meat averaging $680.59 per kilogramme.

That puts the cost of rabbit meat above most of the other meat kind in Jamaica. For example; information from Sampars website show that chicken is about $600 per kilogramme, pork is $945 per kilogramme, beef is $842.60 per kilogramme and goat meat is $2,591.61 per kilogramme.

Similarly, Bernard contended that “rabbit meat is a very clean meat, it is a very healthy meat to eat, low in cholesterol but it’s also one of those meat that you can multiply very fast. It is one of the only animal that can multiply production very fast, the production is so easy to ramp up with rabbit meat.”

He said “it is faster than pig, chicken or anything else because a rabbit have young ones like one month they have a set of eight or 10 rabbits and the growth rate is very fast, so meat production is very high and the beauty about them is that you can feed rabbit on forages and grow them out, you don’t have to depend on grains.”

Local stakeholders have admitted that part of the reason chicken prices are going up is the rising cost for grain commodities.

To that end, the Small Ruminants’ Association president argued that “you can produce good quality meat from forages.”

He said if the country starts producing more forages and fix the marketing side of rabbit meat production, it could blossom into a viable segment of the local meat industry. “Because it’s a niche market you have a lot of farmers who will maybe do the production but can’t market himself.”

With that said, he conceded that getting more Jamaicans interested in rabbit meat will require significant marketing and convincing.

The 2014 research paper highlighted that “In Jamaica, rabbits are perceived as pets/rodents rather than as food items. Consequently, sociological/cultural attitudes may hinder the consumption of rabbit meat on a large scale.”

“I know Jamaicans don’t accept the meat in general but the segments that accept it can be pushed. It’s something that I think we should do even though it’s a niche market, it’s a market that has value and has potential for growth,” stated Bernard.

He also made a call for the rabbit meat production to be more structured in order to reap maximum benefits.

“A lot of young people are involved in it and the structures are not there, no investment and all of those things. It has never gotten a real push and the training and all of those things are now coming into play.”

According to market research firm IndexBox, in 2017 the global rabbit meat market was valued at US$6.4 billion.

The country with the largest volume of rabbit meat consumption was China (925K tonnes), followed by Korea (154K tonnes) and Egypt (57K tonnes).