Blood in the gutters
The Delhi High Court has ordered, in a ruling on March 18, the closure of the city's main abattoir at Idgah, where approximately 12,000 animals -- about 5 times its capacity -- are butchered every day in extremely inhuman and unhygienic conditions. The closure resulted in the shortage of meat and a hike in the prices of chicken and fish. Municipal commissioner Subhash Sharma said, "We are going to improve the hygiene and sanitary conditions at the abattoir and restrict the number of animals slaughtered there everyday to 2,500 as per court orders. This should be able to meet the Capital's requirements."
A large proportion of the meat is currently exported and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi is planning to set up abattoirs in neighbouring states to cater to this market. An economically sound and environmentally desirable solution to congested and highly-polluting abattoirs in urban areas is the establishment of abattoirs in rural areas, according to N S Ramaswamy, director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Action Research and Technology on Man, Animal and Nature and former chairman of the committee on meat industry.
There are 3,000 legal municipal slaughter houses in the country, which annually supply about 6 million tonnes of meat valued at about Rs 12,000 crore. However, efforts to relocate abattoirs to sites outside cities have failed. In Calcutta, Bangalore and Madras, meat traders and butchers have opposed the shifting as it would increase transportation costs. And so have residents near the proposed relocation sites.
Besides, only 5 of the urban abattoirs -- those in Bombay, Goa, Aurangabad, Hyderabad and Durgapur -- have been modernised. Ramaswamy says that an investment of at least Rs 500 crore would need to be made over a span of 10 years to modernise all slaughterhouses. However, he added that profits could increase by as much as 100 per cent if waste is reduced and quality improves.