Source: Dawn

By Faiza Ilyas

Far from the crowded eateries and bustling kitchens of the city of lights, a scene from a nightmare is played out: at an isolated spot near the beach in Bin Qasim Town, the air is heavy with the stench of decaying flesh as two tankers arrive loaded with the blood of slaughtered animals.Stray dogs hover at the limits of one’s vision while flocks of kites and crows wheel overhead as the blood is dumped first into an open concrete tank and then into a vast vat set over a sand stove. A fire is created by burning litter and plastic and as the contents of the pan heat up, dark smoke envelops the area. The boiling process continues for nearly three hours until the blood turns into a glutinous substance, which is then shovelled out on to the ground to dry.

Nearby, next to a heap of animal bones, skulls, hooves and horns, thick smoke emanates from another fire lit under a vat containing water and pieces of waste meat. As the meat separates from the bones and the fat comes floating to the top, a dead buffalo is brought in on a donkey cart.

“We’ll take care of this buffalo tomorrow since we’ve finished for the day,” say the workers, most of them from families that have run such blood and meat rendering units for several generations. “The extracted fat will be further heated to make oil, the bones will be sold and the meat will be further cooked and dried,” they tell this horrified reporter. “The hides have already been salted and will be sold to tanneries.” These blood and meat rendering units of Cattle Colony No 12 are amongst the many such undocumented and unregulated units operating in the city that create cheap sources (raw bones, and rendered bones and meat) of protein, calcium and phosphorus to add to poultry feed or fertiliser. After being boiled for a long time, the blood and meat jelly is dried and then ground to make blood meal and meat meal respectively. Similarly, bones, hooves and horns are crushed in a machine to create a product known as bone meal.

There are two blood meal units and one unit for handling dead animals in Cattle Colony alone. They are run by contractors who pay meat merchants and dairy farmers’ associations lump sums to remove carcasses, waste meat and bones. This material is then taken to the rendering units where ‘usable’ products are extracted. There is no governmental intervention or even regulation of the business. Until the late 1990s, the bloodrendering business used to be operated by the now-defunct Karachi Metropolitan Corporation but meat merchants laid claim and took over the job after winning a court case.

A worker above shovels the blood of slaughtered animals - thickened after being boiled in a vat - onto a wheelbarrow

We are what we eat Chicken feed is roughly constituted of 70 per cent grain, 10 per cent protein, 10 per cent fibre and 10 per cent various vitamins and minerals. Protein is therefore an important component and apart from blood, meat and bone meal, there are about a hundred fish meal units in Ibrahim Haidery and Korangi that cater solely to the need for a protein source in poultry feed. Meanwhile, over a dozen factories in the area handle solid poultry and animal waste.

Some veterinarians claim that such meal, extracted from the remains of bovine mammals, is also being used in cattle feed, albeit in small quantities. Such dietary components were banned in many developed countries years ago since such a cannibalistic diet has been linked to BSE, or the mad cow disease. Other veterinarians, meanwhile, express the fear that the remains of dogs and cats are also rendered into poultry feeds.

It is hard to prove or disprove such claims in the absence of a regulatory authority. What is undeniable, however, is that the government carries out no inspection of rendering units, feed factories and mills, and neither has it ever made any investment towards improving the infrastructure of dairy and meat production units.

The government’s concern for public health and hygiene is evident from the fact that the city’s main abattoir, located in Landhi, has been operating in an ad hoc manner on ‘temporary’ premises for over 40 years.

“This is the most neglected area of public health; animals are slaughtered in filthy conditions and there are no systems to ensure that diseased animals or those under treatment are identified and separated from the healthy ones – in fact, the sick animals are the first to be slaughtered,” a dairy farmer told Dawn. “We are far too poor to be able to afford any losses so an animal is slaughtered as soon as its milk production drops.” Laws in place internationally require that the administration of all sorts of drugs be stopped at least a week before the slaughter of an animal, but this law is barely implemented in Pakistan.

An estimated 1,000 to 1,200 cattle are slaughtered every day at the Landhi abattoir. Their blood is filled in tankers and sent to be processed at the blood processing units. Meanwhile, two or three animals die every day in Cattle Colony, usually due to sickness. These carcasses are sent to the meat and bone processing units. “Nothing goes to waste,” commented a feed factory employee. “Every single part of a dead animal is used in some way or the other.” While workers at the Cattle Colony blood meal units said that their business has remained steady, others claimed that only one unit is left of the four that used to handle the remains of dead animals. Asked whether they were worried about their job’s effect on their health, they said that the filthy environment and polluted air posed no risk since they wore gloves and rubber boots while handling the carcasses. “The smoke is so dark and thick because we burn cotton soaked in thinner, not because of the burning plastic,” they said.

Contaminated fish meal Given the hazards involved in using blood, bone and meat meal for feeding poultry, fish meal and soya bean meal have gained popularity. These too, however, are not free of danger. Soya bean is expensive since it is imported from India while there has been no investment in Pakistan towards exploring the potential of safe fish resources.

“Eighty per cent of the fish meal prepared in the factories here and those in some coastal villages contains contaminants of various sorts,” said Mehga Ram Manghwani, who owns a small fish meal unit in Ibrahim Haidery. “There is no government regulation or supervision. Meanwhile, feed millers exploit fishermen by reducing the rates at which they buy trash fish, without considering that labour costs and diesel prices have increased sharply over the past five years.” Mr Manghwani’s conclusions are supported by Tahir Qureshi who has worked with the IUCN against land-based pollution for years. “Not only are different contaminants added to fish meal, trash fish is itself highly contaminated,” he told Dawn. “Most of the fishermen catch trash fish from creeks that are highly polluted by effluents from power houses, textile factories, tanneries and other industry. Such toxic substances and chemicals are not removed by being boiled at high temperatures, though the compounds may change form. It is unfortunate that products such as poultry meal are becoming more and more unreliable.” Mr Qureshi pointed out that poultry fed on contaminated meal is a hazard to public health. He, however, had never heard of blood, bone or meat meal being used in cattle feed although he was closely associated with the Cattle Colony during the 1990s for research purposes. Blood meal in poultry feed In terms of the prevalent practices in the rendering business, Dr Zafar-ul-Islam Siddiqui of the Marjan Feed Mills pointed out that unregulated rendering was dangerous for not only the poultry but also the eventual human consumers, and that the government had been reminded of this

A worker holds horns which, along with bones and hooves of buffaloes, are crushed in a machine to be used in poultry feed.

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Tags: bin qasim, bird flu, Chicken, Health, Karachi, Poultry