Meat stall owners often dump waste in public places
The district lacks a proper treatment system to dispose
of over 20 tonnes of slaughterhouse waste produced at the 138
slaughterhouses and 40 meat shops every day. As per the data available
with the Animal Husbandry Department, 20,000 birds and 160 animals are
slaughtered in the district each day.
With just one
dysfunctional waste treatment plant owned by the Kozhikode Corporation
at Njeliyanparamba in the city, animal waste disposal is now left to the
mercy of butchers and private entities who, in turn, fill the waste in
plastic covers or sacks and dump across residential areas and public
places.
‘A challenge’
In a
recent meeting chaired by District Collector C.A. Latha, the Animal
Husbandry Department officials said that disposing of slaughterhouse
waste without causing health and environmental concerns had become a
challenge.
The city does not have a government-run
abattoir with proper infrastructure, waste disposal mechanism and
facilities for ante-mortem and post-mortem checks of animals. It has
been a decade since the Corporation’s Kothi abattoir, started in the
1940s, unceremoniously shut shop following protests against the
indiscriminate disposal of animal waste in the area.
Most
shopkeepers use the early morning hours for slaughter, using the
limited space between the footpath and their shop fronts. This is when a
government order (GO) issued on November 19, 2013 directed local bodies
across the State to observe hygiene and compassion at slaughterhouses
as per Section 38 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.
The
section mandated that slaughter could be done only on the premises of
abattoirs and every such facility should provide a separate space for
stunning of animals prior to slaughter, bleeding, and dressing of the
carcass.
Stunning method
The
department has instructed local bodies to ensure that ‘repeated
hammering’ to stun the animal before slaughter be discontinued
immediately. It threatened penal action against violators. The GO wanted
abattoirs to switch to the ‘captive bolt pistol method’ to stun animals
in abattoirs within the next 6 months. Another GO on November 16, 2013
has called for multi-pronged reforms. It pointed to how ‘most of the
slaughtering activities in Kerala is going on without following the
statutory provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Rules of
2001, Bureau of Indian Standards guidelines, pollution control
legislations, meat production industry norms, and so on.’
This
GO had advocated ‘engagement with butchers’ for capacity building and
improvement of their facilities as per standards. It called for
enhancing the abilities of the Animal Husbandry Department, local
bodies, Food Safety Commissioner, and the Sales Tax Department for
better quality checks. The November 16 GO had also directed the
establishment of new, modern abattoirs.
Meanwhile,
the Animal Husbandry Department has now proposed setting up of waste
treatment plants at the block levels with the financial help of grama
panchayats.
List sought
Meanwhile, the district administration has sought a detailed list of slaughterhouses and meat shops in the district.
Many abattoirs function in violation of rules
No government-run abattoir in district
No comments:
Post a Comment