State’s only modern abattoir awaits biz despite infra, slashed rates

Shop owners accidental customers privation caller nutrient chopped successful beforehand of their eyes

Punjab’s lone modern slaughterhouse, built successful 2021 to ‘clean up’ Ludhiana’s nutrient trade, is present struggling to stay successful business. The facility, dispersed implicit 3 acres successful Haibowal suburb located connected the city’s outskirts, was acceptable up connected the orders of the National Green Tribunal. It was meant to extremity the amerciable and unhygienic slaughter of animals successful back-alley shops and halt the travel of untreated discarded h2o into the city’s drains. But 4 years later, small seems to person changed.

Every day, astir 40,000 animals and birds are slaughtered crossed Ludhiana to conscionable the city’s appetite for meat. But lone a fewer 100 of these — astir 300 to 500 — are brought to the authoritative abattoir. The remainder are slaughtered successful tiny shops, often successful unsanitary conditions, with nary checks connected the wellness of the animals oregon the cleanliness of the process.

The slaughter location was designed to beryllium a game-changer. It has a imperishable veterinarian to analyse animals, a chilling portion to sphere meat, a humor processing strategy and adjacent an effluent attraction works to grip waste. But contempt each this, the installation remains mostly empty.

Ritesh Taneja, the backstage contractor who runs the abattoir, says he’s facing immense losses. “I wage ₹35 lakh a twelvemonth to the municipal corp and different ₹25 lakh to the unit and for maintenance. But the nutrient sellers don’t bring their animals here,” helium says, and adds that, “Sometimes, not adjacent a azygous carnal is brought present successful a day.”

Taneja has written to the MC, asking to extremity his contract. But alternatively of letting him go, officials person promised to ace down connected amerciable slaughtering. “They accidental they’ll instrumentality enactment against shopkeepers, but thing truly has changed,” helium said.

Municipal Commissioner Aaditya Dachalwal insisted that the thrust had already begun. “We’ve sealed respective shops and much enactment volition beryllium taken soon,” helium says. To pull much shopkeepers, the slaughter charges person besides been slashed — from ₹150 to ₹50 for goats and sheep, and from ₹10 to ₹5 for poultry. Still, the numbers haven’t improved.

Shopkeepers, connected the different hand, accidental the strategy doesn’t enactment for them.

One nutrient seller successful Chander Nagar said, “Customers privation caller meat, close successful beforehand of their eyes,” helium says. “If we bring nutrient from the plant, we request due storage. Otherwise, it goes bad.”

Environmental activists are besides raising alarms. Gurpreet Singh Micky, a poultry husbandman and an environmentalist, says the discarded from amerciable slaughtering is polluting the city’s drainage strategy and harming nationalist health. “Ludhiana consumes 40,000 to 50,000 animals and birds each day. Where bash you deliberation each that humor and discarded goes?” helium asks. He has been penning letters to the MC and the National Green Tribunal successful this regard.

The slaughter location was the archetypal of its benignant successful the region, built with the purpose of introducing bid and hygiene to a antecedently unregulated trade. But today, it stands arsenic a awesome of a strategy that looks bully connected paper, but is struggling to past successful business.