Study on socio-economic condition of butchers and trend of market price of red meat at some selected areas in Bangladesh

The study was aimed to assess the socio-economic status of butchers and trend of market price of meat changed from last nine (09) years at five (05) selected areas in Bangladesh such as Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi, Khulna and Rangpur City Corporation. The study was carried out through a structured questionnaire among seventy five (75) selected butchers each survey time where fifteen (15) in each area. The survey was conducted from January to August, 2014 and February to May, 2023. During survey the considered parameters were the butchers age, level of education, family size, land size, housing, source of capital andcurrent red meat price. Result from the study revealed that the respondents average aged in Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi, Khulna and Rangpur city corporation were 40.30, 34.27, 36.27, 36.40 and 35.00, respectively and all of them were male. For literacy rate of respondents it was found that about 56% butchers were had secondary level education, 38.67% butchers had primary level education, 4% had higher secondary level education and only 1.33% were graduate. About 88.23% butchers solely depend on meat processing but along with meat processing 4.71% respondents were engaged with business and 7.06% respondents were engaged with agriculture. In 2014, it was found that all type of meat (beef, buffen, chevon and mutton) price were highest in Dhaka and it was average 582.00, 562.50, 900.00 and 870.00 TK in Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi and Rangpur, respectively. In case of Chevon market price was 895.00, 882.00, 870.71 and 865.09 in Rajshahi, Chittagong, Rangpur and Khulna, respectively. For Mutton it was 830.00, 820.00, 820.00 and 816.00 TK in Chittagong, Rajshahi, Rangpur and Khulna, respectively. It was found that market price increased so rapidly and the rate of increasing percentage for beef, buffen, chevon and mutton were 195.27%, 193.76%, 154.83% and 169.93%, respectively. Overall slaughtered number of cattle, buffalo, goat and sheep per week in selected areas were 42.84, 7.47, 23.29 and 4.84, respectively.