The production of rabbit meat in Malta : how management and local environmental conditions contribute to the production costs in the local market

Abstract

The aim of this study is to calculate the production cost of rabbit meat in the Maltese Islands. Interviewing rabbit farms of different sizes and collecting data of their expenses calculated an average cost of production for the months from November 2014 till April 2015. The data shows that only large-scale breeders are working at a profit while small-scale breeders are merely covering their expenses. The purpose of this research is to pinpoint the areas where the majority of the expenditure is being done on and what solutions can be found to limit such costs. The idea is to make the Maltese rabbit meat producer more competitive with the European product being imported to Malta. The secondary target of this project is to guide prospective and current rabbit breeders to change the way they collect financial data to find their cost of production and what the best price to sell the product for is. In this dissertation, there are tables to help guide the rabbit breeders with their calculations. This study also gives a brief history of rabbit consumption in Europe and in Malta. Important data on how to raise rabbits for meat, like nutritional guidelines, habitat, cage systems, stockman ship systems and important rabbit diseases, are also given in this report. The results show that the cost of rabbit meat production in Malta, in the best of circumstances, is twice the normal cost of production in Italy and this is due to the small economy of scale of the rabbit meat industry in Malta.