Set up at cost of Rs 19.5 crore, MC slaughter house stares at closure

The Municipal Corporation slaughter house located on Hambran Road is meeting the same fate as the carcass plant. Set up at a cost of Rs 19.50 crore, the plant has the capacity to slaughter around 16,000 birds and 1,000 goats, sheep or pigs.

Despite several efforts, it is not being utilised to its full capacity and illegal slaughtering continues unabated in the city. As a result, the municipal corporation’s slaughter house is on the brink of closure since meat selling shops shy away from using the services of the slaughter house, citing various reasons.

The MC has now decided to take strict action against the illegal meat slaughter shops in the city and has served notices to nearly 100 shops in this regard and plan to seal those which fail to abide by the rules.

Charges of Rs 10 for poultry birds, Rs 100 for pigs, Rs 150 for goat and sheep is keeping the shopkeepers away from the MC’s slaughter house. As claimed by the meat shop owners, customers’ demand for freshly slaughtered meat and not stale butchered meat is another reason for the non-usage of the services at the slaughter house.

Rajesh, a meat seller from the city, said, “The cost of slaughtering is too high and small shopkeepers don’t have storage facilities to keep the slaughtered meat, so they don’t prefer getting it done in advance. Also, they said that there was no guarantee that the slaughtered meat would be sold in one day as it does not have long shelf life.”

Officials of the MC said that they had served the notices to shopkeepers and would start sealing the shops indulging in illegal slaughtering. The civic body has also appealed to the residents to ask for certified meat from the shopkeepers. The meat is properly.

The city has around 1,000 meat retailers and 30 to 35 wholesale poultry sellers. At least 50,000 chickens are slaughtered in the city on a daily basis.

Ludhiana