Social acceptability of rabbit meat and strategies for improving its consumption in Ekiti State Southwestern Nigeria

F A S Dairo, H M Abi and F M Oluwatusin*

Department of Animal Production & Health Sciences,
Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria.
fasdairo@yahoo.com
* Department. of Agricultural Economics & Extension,
Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria.

Abstract

Eight local council areas were randomly selected out of 16 that exist in Ekiti State, Nigeria and 240 respondents were administered structured questionnaires and personal interviews. The study examined the acceptability of rabbit meat, socio-economic characteristics of rabbit farmers and rabbit meat consumers.

Results showed that 0.80% of the respondents raised rabbit only, 17.1 % were rabbit meat consumers and 60% indicated awareness of rabbit production.  About 66.7% of the respondents produced rabbits for sales while 29.6 % raised them strictly for meat consumption. The order of preference for rabbit meat consumption is farmers > traders > civil servants > artisans > students and relished for its palatability. Feedstuff used is in the order of forage > kitchen wastes + forage > kitchen wastes > pellet + forage. Bamboo/wood cages constituted 65.8% of housing type, wood cages reinforced with wire mesh (32.9%) and welded iron cages (1.3%). Labour was sourced mainly from the family (96.30%) with no credit facility. Production challenges identified were housing, diseases, non-availability of breeding stock and lack of government support. The establishment of “Rabbit Farmers’ Co-operatives” at local council level, intervention of other public and private agencies with proper coordination of inputs supply coupled with road show campaign will improve production, social acceptability and rabbit meat consumption in Ekiti State.

Key words: Awareness, farmers’ co-operatives, government, road show

Introduction

The intake of animal protein in Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) such as Nigeria has been documented as grossly inadequate (FAO/WHO/UNU 2002) and means of improvement is also subject of interest to nutritionists. The animal protein content of a typical Nigerian diet is about 17% of the total food protein, which is lower than 60% in the United Kingdom and 71% in New Zealand (World Bank 2001). Enilolobo and Aromolaran  (2007) reported that vegetable protein constituted over 83%  and 75% of total protein intake for rural and urban dwellers respectively in Ogun State located within the same geographical zone as Ekiti State in Nigeria. Poverty reduction and food security challenges in terms of provision of high quality meat for the significant proportion of Nigerian population is one of the Millennium Development Goal’s (MDG) aimed at improving the living standard of the citizenry (UN 2009). Backyard rabbit production has been identified as a simple enterprise for modest income, and upgrading of family diets (Lukefahr  2007). Therefore, it has been proposed as one of the means to bridge gap of inadequate intake of animal protein (Omole et  al  2005; Dairo  2008). Rabbit has good quality meat of high protein and health values (Lukefahr 2007). Its noiseless nature, odour free small body size that requires less land/space, ability to utilize and convert forage and agricultural wastes and adaptability to a wide range of ecosystems endears rabbit keeping to urban and rural dwellers (Linga et al 2003; Dairo 2008). Access to beef, chevron, mutton, pork and poultry meat for consumption has been hindered largely by high prices which is a consequential effect of production cost. Productions of farm animals have capital outlay for infrastructure and feed cost in most of the LDCs which makes their products not often readily available to the poor. Rabbits have the capability of producing 47 kilogramme of meat per doe per year, required to meet the animal protein need of a medium sized family household (Hassan and Owolabi 1996; Lukefahr 2007).

There is no documented record of how rabbit production started in Nigeria but this could be during the First World War or the colonization era by the Europeans. However, efforts at developing rabbit production in Nigeria has been ongoing for over three decades especially with the military government policy of “Operation Feed the Nation” (OFN) in the late 1970s and the “Better Life for Rural Women Development” of 1984 to 1991. Progress made so far in rabbit production has not been comparable with that of other farm animals in the country. The meat is not as readily available in the open market as beef, chevron, mutton, pork, poultry, fish and bush meat. In spite of this, researches over time show the growing interest in adopting rabbit production as a veritable means of economic initiatives for the poor and alternative to high cost meat products of other farm animals and bush meat (Abu et al 2008; Kalio et al 2008). Government and non governmental organizations’ efforts have not produced the expected results that will translate rabbit production from the rudimentary stage to an acceptable minimum standard that would lead to increase in its meat consumption. This study examined the social acceptance of rabbit meat, constraints of rabbit production and suggests strategies for enhanced meat consumption and production in Ekiti State Southwestern Nigeria.

Materials and methods

Description of site of study

This study was conducted in Ekiti State, Southwestern Nigeria. It is located within longitudes 4 ^o 5’ and 5 ^o 5’ east of Greenwich Meridian and latitudes 7 ^o 15’ and 8 ^o 5’ north of the equator. The population of the State is about 2.4 million with a landmass of 6353 km². Politically, the State is delineated into 16 local council areas which have tropical climate with distinct wet and dry seasons that support the agricultural activities (Ekiti State Government 2011). The local council areas in Ekiti State are Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti East, Ekiti West, Ekiti South West, Efon Alaaye, Emure, Gbonyin, Ise/Orun, Ido/Osi, Ijero, Ikere, Ikole, Irepodun/Ifelodun, Ilejemeje, Moba and Oye.  The annual rainfall is about 1200mm and average temperature of 27.12^o Celsius. It is predominantly agrarian with a population density of about 375 people per square kilometer (National Bureau of Statistics 2011).

Data collection, processing and interpretation

 A total of 240 questionnaires were administered to respondents' rabbit producers who were simple randomly selected from 8 local council areas in Ekiti State. The selections of the 8 local council areas out of 16 that exist in the State were also based on simple random sampling.  In each of the local council areas, three towns were selected to make a total of 24 communities that participated in the study that started October 2010 till February, 2011. Ten respondents were randomly selected from each of the communities to respond to a structured questionnaire based on personal contact and information from the locality (Table 1).  The local council areas with towns sampled are shown in Table 1. The questionnaires addressed the socio-economic status of the rabbit farmers, rabbit meat consumers and meat consumption, mode of finance and the production challenges faced by the farmers. The primary data were ranked and analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Results and discussion

Figure 1 on the type of farming practiced by rabbit producers  in Ekiti State  shows that just 0.80% of the farmers were into rabbit production only, 47.1%  in crop + rabbit production, 46.7% in  mixed farming + rabbit production and 5.42 % poultry/livestock + rabbit production.  It is worthy of note that Ekiti State is agrarian and most of the citizens including government workers, traders and artisans engage in arable and cash crop production. This is suggestive that the citizens may to a reasonable extent have more intake of vegetable protein than animal protein (Enilolobo and Aromolaran 2007).

Figure 1. Type of farmiing practised by rabbit producers in Ekiti State, Nigeria

Table 2 shows the social characteristics of rabbit producers in Ekiti State. There were more female (55.4%) than male (44.6%) respondents. This could be a “rub-off” effect of the defunct military government policy and programme implementations where by women were the focus. One of such programme was “Better Life for Rural Women Development” meant to provide self reliant employment and develop rural women dwellers. Agricultural commodities of focus on which women were trained for self employment and income generation during the programme implementation in the Sate were mainly cassava, cassava flour production and rearing of microlivestock. The components of the microlivestock were snail and rabbit production.  This must have enlightened the women in rabbit production with subsequent greater interest than men who engaged more in crop farming since Ekiti State is more of an agrarian rural State.  About 60% of the respondents expressed awareness of benefits of rabbit production even before commencement of production while 40% did not. Many of the respondents (66.7 %) raised rabbits as pets with the intention of sales to educational institutions. This was because of the rise in the use of rabbits for research and training by educational institutions in Ekiti State that had been making purchases from neighbouring States. About 29.6% raised rabbit exclusively for meat consumption while 3.70% produced both for meat consumption and sales. The distribution of respondents involved in rabbit farming by age group shows that above 60 years (25.8%) and  51 – 60 years (26.3%) constituted the larger percentage of those involved in rabbit production in the State.

Even though the spread covered all the age groups, the percentage decreased with age reduction. This is a clear departure from reports in literature that younger people get more involved in rabbit production (Onifade et al 1997; Lukefahr 2007; Kalio et al 2008). The progressive decline in economic situation in Nigeria may have shifted the interest of the youth from farming to other commercial activities that can generate instant income. The rabbit producers mainly comprised retirees and those about to retire from government jobs that chose rabbit keeping as pastime or attended rabbit production workshop/training as retirement activity option. About 47.1% were married, 26.3 % widowed, 19.6 % single while 7.0% were divorcees. It shows that rabbit farming can productively engage the different categories of marital/family status for economic benefits if supported with good policy priority, focus and monitoring by government agencies like the National Directorate for Employment (a government department saddled with the mandate of job creation and employment of Nigerian citizens). This will create jobs through production, input supply, marketing, artisan services that include construction of cages and others such as packaging and consultancy (Lukefahr 2007).

Rabbit keeping cuts across educational strata (Table 2). Respondents with no formal education (30.8%) were more into rabbit keeping than those with secondary (26.3%) and tertiary education (24.6%). Many of the respondents that raise rabbits are rural women mostly involved in petty trading in their locality. The status of those engaged in rabbit production cut across the social strata in the order of traders > civil servants > farmers > artisans > students. Family household size played important roles in rabbit keeping. Household size 1-5 (64.6%) ranked higher than the others in rabbit keeping. This is the average family size of low income group of civil servants in the state and keeps rabbit for consumption and sales. The interaction and exposure of these groups of people (civil servants and traders) and the realization of the benefits of rabbit meat might have influenced interest in rabbit keeping as pastime.

Table 3 shows the social characteristics of rabbit consumers in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Rabbit meat ranked fourth among the preferred types of meat (17.1 %). The order of preference of the meat type is beef > bush meat > chevron > rabbit > poultry > pork > mutton. A large number of the respondents (78.0%) consumed rabbit meat because of its palatability or taste/nutritive value. Others preferred the meat because it was cheap (8.00 %) while 6% consumed it as it was the main source of meat available for the family. Only 4% of the respondents consumed rabbit meat for its medicinal value (heart patient) because of its low fat contents (4.0%) while 4% could not give special reasons for preference of rabbit meat over others. About 59.3 % ate rabbit meat occasionally, while 23.7% consumed it once a week and 8.0 % on daily basis. Rabbit consumption cuts across the social strata namely the farmers (32.1%), traders (29.2%), civil servants (28.8%), artisans (7.10%) and students (2.80%). This is an indication of acceptability among all the income groups of the society.

From personal interviews, none of the respondents stated any special reasons either traditional or cultural against the consumption of rabbit meat in Ekiti State. This agrees with the report of Abu et al (2008) that there is no known taboo against the consumption of rabbit meat in Nigeria. The high percentage of consumption of meat due to palatability could be a good means of popularizing rabbit production and its meat in the State. This may go along way in making useful contributions to the economic growth of the State through job creation along the production chain line. Many of the respondents (72.0 %) preferred smoked rabbit meat while 18.0 % and 10.0% wanted frozen and roasted rabbit respectively. Based on the reasons advanced by respondents for rabbit meat consumption, processing, packaging and marketing could be explored to meet local taste and demand.  Cottage industry could be established for processing and packaging which could generate employment opportunities and subsequently improve the living standard of the State citizenry.  Information gathered indicated high expectations for processed rabbit meat for sale in frozen food stores and supermarkets as obtained for poultry meat and that non-availability of rabbit accounted for the poor consumption of its meat.

Table 4 shows the constraints of rabbit producers in Ekiti State, Nigeria.  Bamboo/wood plank were used to house rabbits by 65.8% of the respondents, 32.9 % used one tier wooden/wire mesh cages and 1.30% improvised welded iron cages as backyard housing for the rabbits. Harvested forages was used by 37.0 % of the respondents for feeding, 22.0% used kitchen wastes, 33.0% combined kitchen wastes and forages while 8.00 % combined forages and pellet feed. Most of the rabbits suffered from pneumonia (20.8 %) and ectoparasites mainly mange (70.8%) while the remaining 8.40% could not tell the specific disease experienced. A large number of the  farmers practiced self-medication of their rabbits (71.3%), while 8.33% engaged the services of a  veterinary officer and 20.4% did not  experience any outbreak (as at the time of this study) hence did not use any vet services. They however believed that forages fed to rabbits may have ethno-veterinary values. About 33.0% of the farmers started rabbit rearing within 1-2 years before this study while 22.0 % and 15.0% commenced at about 2 – 3 years and 3 - 4 years respectively.

About 30 % could not actually tell when they started rabbit farming and information gathered showed that they started less than 10 years. They were categorized as those that started rabbit farming with 4 – 5 years experience but not up to 10 years. This trend suggests that though rabbit keeping might be at its infancy in the State, it is rapidly growing at about 9.72% (Table 4). It is an indication of its socio-acceptance among the people in the State.

In addition, reports from interviews indicated that about 25.8 % of the respondents got their foundation stock as gift items from friends while 74.2% made outright purchase from open market (Table 4). Foundation stocks were difficult to come by and government institutions such as research institutes and universities that should readily assist in breeding programme could not embark on this for lack of pure bred stock, poor facilities and inadequate funding.  All the farmers were not exposed to any credit facility.  Even though family labour (96.30%) was predominant, 3.80 % of the respondents used hired prorated labour for activities such as cutting of forages to feed the rabbits.

Housing, feed and health were identified as part of the challenges of increased rabbit production in Ekiti State. Hence, there is need for procurement of locally standardized cage units and availability of pellet feed for increased production. Establishment of “Rabbit Farmers’ Co-operatives” in groups of not less than 10 - 15 members within a ward in each local council area for the purpose of efficient record keeping, monitoring and input supply may be adopted for efficient monitoring and evaluation. Foundation stock of 1 -2 does could be given to members and a buck used to service them from a centre owned by government agencies or NGOs. The co-operators could buy customized concentrate feed for distribution among members.  Furthermore, formation of “Rabbit Producers’ Association” comprising of farmers, workers in agriculture departments of government agencies and academics should be encouraged. The group can lobby to influence policy making and implementation in government. They could also engage in “road show” campaign for enhanced rabbit meat consumption and acceptability. All these will facilitate increase popularization and production of rabbit meat.  It is in this respect that government agricultural agencies, policy makers and the National Directorate of Employment in Ekiti State could harness the potentials available in raising rabbit by facilitating the provisions of  the necessary needs for increased and efficient production to further explore and enhance the growing acceptability of rabbit meat and it’s other by products.

Conclusions

• Rabbit meat acceptance in Ekiti State is still low even though growing at an impressive rate of 9.72% annually.
  
  
• The constraints such as housing, feeds, health and availability of foundation stock could be addressed by quick intervention of government agricultural agencies and non governmental organizations for policy and input supply.
  
  
• Rabbit meat consumption could be popularized in Ekiti State by formation of co-operatives and associations that could further production development through campaign programmes such as “road shows.”

References

Abu O A, Onifade A A, Abanikanda O T F and Obiyan R I 2008 Status and promotional strategy for rabbit production in Nigeria.  In Proceedings of the 9^th World Rabbit Congress Verona, Italy June 10^th -13^th, 2008. Pp 1499- 1503 http://world-rabbit-science.com/WRSA-Proceedings/Congress-2008-Verona/Verona-2008-a.htm#management Accessed 8^th January 2012

Dairo F A S 2008 Performance and haematological evaluation of weaner rabbits fed      loofah gourd seed meal (Luffa Cylindrica M.J. Roem).  African Journal of Food & Nutrition Development 8 (4): 451-463. Accessed 6^th January at www.ajfand.net/Volume8/No4/Dairo2570.pdf

Ekiti State Government 2011 Population figures. Accessed 28^th Dec. 2011 at http://ekitistate.gov.ng/content/population-figures

Enilolobo O S and Aromolaran A B 2007 The pattern of animal protein consumption by households in Ogun state, Nigeria- a spatial analysis. The Nigerian Journal of Economic and Social Studies. 49(2). Accessed on 2^nd January 2012 at http://www.nigerianeconomicsociety.org/journal_abstract49_2.php#2

FAO/WHO/UNU 2002 Protein and amino acid requirement in human nutrition. Report of a Joint   FAO/WHO/UNU Expert Consultation on Protein and Amino Acid. Requirements in Human Nutrition. Technical report series 935, Geneva, Switzerland. pp 1- 4 Accessed 2^nd January 2012 at http://whqlibdoc.who.int/trs/WHO_TRS_935_eng.pdf

Hassan W A and Owolabi R O 1996 Production performance of domestic rabbits in semi-arid zone of Nigeria. Proceedings of the 6th World Rabbit Congress, Toulouse, France 3: 359-363

Kalio G A, Etala I and Ginika V E 2008 Rabbit meat as a preferred animal protein source in Ekpeye Kingdom of River State. Livestock Research for Rural Development 20(1). Accessed 8^th January 2012 at www.lrrd.org/lrrd20/1/kali20009.htm

Linga S S, Lukefahr S D and Lukefahr M J 2003 Feeding of Lablab purpureus forage with molasses blocks or sugar cane stalk to rabbit fryers in subtropical south Texas. Livestock Production Science 80: 201-209. Accessed abstract 8^th January 2012 at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301622602001896

Lukefahr S D 2007 The small-scale rabbit production model: Intermediate factors. Livestock Res. for Rural Dev. 19 Article No 69. Accessed 3^rd January 2012 at http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd19/5/luke19069.htm

National Bureau of Statistics 2011 National Population Commission. Accessed on 5^th January, 2012 at http://www.nigerianstat.gov.ng/ and http://www.population.gov.ng/

Omole A J, Omueti O and Ogunleke O 2005 Performance characteristics of weaned rabbits fed graded levels of dry cassava peel fortified with soycorn residue. Journal of Food Agriculture and Environment 3: 36-38.

Onifade A A, Abu O A, Obiyan R I and Abanikannda  O T F 1999  Rabbit production in Nigeria: Some aspects of current status and promotional strategies. World Rabbit Science. 7 (2): 51-58.

United Nations 2009  The Millennium Development Goals Report. Accessed on 8^th January, 2012 at www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG_Report_2009_ENG.pdf

World Bank 2001  World Development Report 2000/2001. Attacking poverty. Oxford University Press. New York. USA. pp335. Accessed on 8^th January, 2012 at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPOVERTY/Resources/WDR/English-Full-Text-Report/toc.pdf

Received 13 January 2012; Accepted 16 April 2012; Published 1 June 2012

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