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City to get modern and hygienic slaughterhouse

Staff Report

LAHORE: The Punjab Livestock Department has approved one new slaughterhouse each, in Lahore and Rawalpindi, costing Rs 900 million together. The new slaughterhouses will house cold chain facilities and meat markets.

The decision was taken at a meeting on Thursday attended by Punjab Livestock Minister Haroon Ahmad and Secretary Athar Tahir. The meeting reviewed livestock development projects under the chief minister’s Vision-2020 to provide consumers with hygienic meat and to meet World Trade Organization (WTO) challenges.

A modern slaughterhouse had been a longstanding demand of the meat exporters since October 2001.

“Pakistani exporters have suffered due to lack of a modern meat processing plant in the country,” an official told Daily Times. He said the condition of slaughterhouses was bad. They were small and most were located in congested areas, he said, adding that they were unhygienic, old-fashioned and had insufficient transportation facilities.

“Animals are slaughtered primitively, which affects the export of meat and meat by-products,” the official said.

The Punjab government had already obtained 717 acres near Shahpur Kanjra for a new slaughterhouse. “The new slaughterhouse will have a slaughtering capacity of 9,000 small and 7,000 large animals,” said the official.

There are four major slaughterhouses in Lahore including one in Shahdara, Baghbanpura, Saddar and Kot Kamboh, while about 75 percent of the meat supplies come from the last where around 7,000 goats or sheep and 500 cows or buffaloes are slaughtered every day five days a week.

Around 600,000 kilogrammes (kg) of meat is consumed in Lahore every day half of which is of poultry and fish, according to a non-government survey a couple of years ago.

The survey report said that around 200,000 goats or sheep and 20,000 buffaloes or cows are slaughtered every month to supply 160,000 kg of beef and 140,000 kg of mutton daily.

Pakistan could not penetrate middle eastern markets even when the “mad cow” disease broke out in Europe because the country had an unhygienic and conventional slaughtering system. Trade delegations from Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates visited government slaughterhouses five years ago and disallowed meat exports to their countries for lack of hygiene in Pakistani slaughterhouses.

The official said the Punjab government had allocated Rs 51 million to upgrade and standardise the vaccination laboratories and for their ISO certification. He said the livestock director general for research was asked to inspect the laboratories.

The Punjab government also allocated Rs 96 million to the University of Veterinary Sciences to set up a reference laboratory.

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