Most people start a rabbit farm planning to sell meat. Most small rabbit farms in Uzbekistan end up selling live animals. The reason is the law on slaughter, and it is worth understanding before you buy your first doe.
The legal points in this article are based on laws and regulations found in public sources. Some could not be fully verified, and rules change, so confirm everything with your district veterinary office and hokimiyat before you sell.
Selling live rabbits
- If you sell a live rabbit to a buyer who slaughters it themselves, the slaughter rules do not apply to you. That is why most small farms sell live.
- Whether you need a veterinary document to move or sell live rabbits between districts or regions could not be confirmed. Ask your district veterinary office before transporting animals, especially to another region.
- It is also unclear whether rabbits fall under the animal identification law passed in 2025.
- The catch: at typical prices for live meat rabbits, feed eats most of the revenue, 58–88% of it in one calculation. Selling meat rabbits live rarely pays well; selling breeding stock does better.
Selling meat: what the law requires
- Under Article 23 of the Law on Veterinary Medicine, livestock must be slaughtered at specialised facilities with veterinary-sanitary documents. Under Article 18, animals and animal products may only be traded with permission from the state veterinary service, in specially designated places.
- The technical regulation on meat safety (UzTR.36-030:2018) explicitly covers rabbits and makes veterinary inspection before and after slaughter mandatory. The only exception is food produced by individuals for their own use with no intention to sell. So slaughtering a rabbit at home for your family is fine; slaughtering at home for sale is not covered by that exception. Sources conflict on whether this regulation was repealed in September 2025, so check.
- Under the 2006 livestock slaughter rules, the approved places are a meat plant, a slaughter point, or a small rural slaughter ground that the rules size for 5–7 animals a day. Slaughtering for sale requires a permit from the local authorities, issued on the basis of a veterinary-sanitary conclusion. Rabbits are specifically named among the animals covered.
- At a bazaar, meat must be re-examined and stamped by the market's veterinary laboratory and sold from an equipped meat stall. A state review found 30 markets without veterinary laboratories and 88 without meat pavilions, so what is possible depends on your district.
In practice: before you buy any does, find the nearest approved slaughter point and ask whether it handles rabbits, and on what terms.
Halal: the questions buyers ask
- "Is rabbit halal?" Rabbit is considered halal in the Hanafi school traditionally followed in Uzbekistan, but many buyers are not sure, so expect the question. If a buyer wants a definite answer, suggest they ask their imam.
- "Who slaughtered it, and how?" Halal slaughter is a swift cut through the windpipe, gullet and major blood vessels of a living, healthy animal. Buyers also want to know the animal was not sick or already dead, which is exactly what veterinary inspection confirms.
- "Is it certified?" Since May 2025 Uzbekistan has had a voluntary state Halal mark. It is not required for selling meat within the country. Large producers use it as a selling point; at small volumes it rarely pays for itself.
- Be honest. Never claim a certificate you do not have.
Where small farms really sell
What public data shows: the market for rabbit meat in Uzbekistan is thin. The national rabbit herd is shrinking (down 3% in the year to early 2023), classified sites carry almost no rabbit meat listings, and roughly two-thirds of the rabbit companies registered in 2019–2020 have since been liquidated. Plan your sales before you plan production.
The realistic channels:
- Breeding stock for other keepers, through classified sites, Telegram groups or directly. The highest profit per animal and no slaughter rules. But it depends on a steady stream of newcomers, and your reputation depends on selling honestly.
- Live rabbits to neighbours and acquaintances. Small volumes, but simple.
- Live rabbits in a bazaar's animal section. Possible, but buyers bargain hard and other sellers' sick rabbits may be right next to yours. Quarantine any rabbit that comes home unsold.
- Meat delivered direct to customers (legal slaughter required): families with babies or children with allergies (rabbit is a common hypoallergenic first meat), people on diets and expatriates, mostly in Tashkent. You need a Telegram channel whose audience you build yourself, and regular deliveries.
- Restaurants and delivery kitchens. Realistic for small volumes of legally slaughtered meat.
- Supermarkets. Not at small-farm scale.
- Selling to large rabbit companies. Do not count on it. The large companies we looked at sell technology, feed and rabbits to new farmers, and we found no buy-back guarantee. Ask directly: do you buy finished rabbits from outside growers, at what price per kilo, and under what contract?
- Rabbit pelts have almost no market, so do not build plans on them. Manure is a far more useful by-product.
Test before you build
A simple test: buy a small batch of finished rabbits from an existing farm and try to sell them to buyers over one month. If you cannot sell 15, you will not sell 100.
Common mistake: Planning a farm around home-slaughtered meat sold to neighbours and at the bazaar. That is precisely the sale the law does not allow, and neighbours alone cannot buy a farm's whole output. Decide first whether you will sell live, or whether you have access to an approved slaughter point.
