Livestock including poultry contributes substantially to the national GDP, and within agriculture, the livestock sector has been claiming the largest share, contributing 60.1% to the agriculture value added and about 11.5% to the national GDP. In Pakistan both the human and livestock population are increasing tremendously. However, the area under cultivation for the production of fodders, grains and high quality feedstuffs for livestock feeding remains the same. Therefore, there is a continuous competition between humans and livestock for consumption of grains and valuable crops in which the former is always a winner. Despite Pakistan holding huge livestock population of over 200 million heads, the current supplies of animal proteins in terms of milk, meat and egg are inadequate to meet the human requirements, which are attributed to low animal productivity. Feed is recognized as the most important element of livestock production systems, forming up to 70% of the cost of production. The supply and demand gap for dry biomass, crude protein and metabolizable energy are 19.4%, 37.2% and 38.0%, respectively for livestock in Pakistan. Considering feed as the foundation of livestock and poultry development, the Animal Nutrition Program (ANP) was initiated in January, 1982 with the objective to carry out both innovative and adaptive research with the aim of resolving the issue of low livestock productivity due to inadequate nutrition.

The Animal Nutrition Program was initiated in January, 1982 as a FAO/UNDP assisted project and continued as such until 1987 at NARC. In May 1995, the program was reorganized as Animal Nutrition Institute. From the early days of inception ANP had basic facilities regarding nutritional evaluation of feedstuffs. Due to growing number of samples received from universities and sister programs of NARC, ANP during 2008 inducted automated equipment for proximate and finer analysis of feed and food stuffs. Currently the ANP has high in-put system for proximate, fiber analysis, amino acid analysis, gas chromatography for volatile fatty acids, and miscellaneous analysis using photometry. Besides the analytical facilities, Program has Feed Technology Unit for production of various types of livestock feed products and excellent facilities for experimentation on ruminants and poultry.