KARACHI: Nauseating contents of poultry feed threat to public health
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 blood-rendering 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.
We are what we eat
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 issue on a number of occasions.
“Rendering makes productive use of waste and is an essential industry,” he told Dawn. “But, the renderers are also silent partners in the food chain and must be regulated. Currently, there is no law to check malpractices and the Pakistan Poultry Association, of which I am a member, has raised the issue with the government many times. On our part, I don’t think that any poultry farmer uses the blood and meat meal prepared in the Cattle Colony units because it contains a lot of ash.”
According to Dr Siddiqui, some of the rendering units that handle solid poultry and selective cattle waste have been repeatedly asked to adopt safe and healthy practices but the task is made difficult by the fact that there is no legislation in this regard.
“Another major problem is that dead birds are used during the rendering process and the government has been asked to devise laws in this context a number of times,” he said, adding that blood meal constitutes hardly two per cent of the feed for poultry. “Because of the risks involved, by and large people prefer fish and vegetable sources to add protein to poultry feed,” he commented. “The market is competitive and no one wants to incur losses by using bad feed. We know that it is in our interest to maintain quality. However,” he conceded, “there is no inspection on the part of the government.”
Pakistan on WHO watch list
Dr S. A. Qureshi, a pathologist and cooperative teacher with Karachi University’s physiology department, warned that meal drawn from cattle and used in poultry and livestock feed poses serious health risks, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE, generally referred to as the mad cow disease.
Pointing towards the dire need for government regulation on rendering processes, he told Dawn that “germs die at a very high temperature, except for prion – mutated protein particles that cause BSE and are remarkably resistant to freezing, pasteurisation and even sterilisation or the natural decaying process.” He said that research had indicated that the source of the BSE infection was contaminated cattle feed prepared from dead animal tissues or rendered meal containing brain and spinal cord tissues affected by scarpie, a fatal degenerative sheep and goat disease.
“Humans can be exposed to the infection through the food chain of bovine offal products,” he explained. “Whether BSE already exists in the country, we simply don’t know. Prion has a long incubation period and it is possible that animals and people are already dying of the disease. The Ministry of Health simply does not have the scientific equipment to carry out the tests required.”
According to Dr Qureshi, Pakistan is on the WHO watch list for the mad cow disease. The organisation has suggested that the international trade of live cattle, meat and bone meal, food containing beef, blood and blood products, pharmaceuticals and human and bovine tissue used in biological matter exported by the UK may have infected cattle in other countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. “Similarly, the use of bovine offal in the human food chain can pose a potential disease risk,” he said.
In terms of protective measures, he pointed out that the government must stop the import of meat-bone meal, meat and live animals, in addition to putting a proper rendering system in place. “Though they may once have been germ-free, the meal is re-contaminated when it is spread on the ground and stray animals or birds feed on it,” he stated.
No tests for safety standards
Asked whether any sample of the milk, eggs, meat or poultry on the market had ever been tested in terms of safety and quality standards, senior veterinarian and university teacher Dr M. S. Jaffery said that to his knowledge, this had never been done in the country’s history and that in fact, no government facility for conducting such tests existed.
“The government must establish a separate livestock and poultry ministry instead of this being merely a wing under the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock,” he told Dawn.
The rendering processes prevalent in the city and the contents of the feed for poultry and cattle are pressing issues that appear to have been so far been entirely neglected by the government. Not only do they involve deeply hazardous implications for public health, they also impact religious sensitivities.
Last year, the Supreme Court of Pakistan was in the process of deciding a case regarding the import of bone and meat meal containing pork, which had allegedly been used in poultry feed for many years. The hearings were still taking place when the judicial crisis disrupted proceedings. During the same period, fishermen held protests against feed millers who had reduced the rates of trash fish and were importing cheap meat and bone meal that contained pork.
If a chicken fed on pork extracts can be considered haraam, what is the status of an animal fed on the by-products of dead animals, possibly of its own species?
Box item Pollution issues
The Sindh Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has taken notice of the air pollution being caused by rendering units in Cattle Colony. Talking to Dawn, Sepa director Kiran Noman said that a notice was sent last week to the town municipal officer concerned and the matter was being investigated.
In terms of the health hazards posed by the rendering units, Dr Javaid A. Khan, a professor of pulmonary and critical medicine at the Aga Khan University and Hospital, said that the burning of polythene materials releases toxic gases that destroys lung immunity and makes people vulnerable to various diseases, including respiratory infections.
“Such pollution is extremely dangerous,” he said. “People who live in such an environment are likely to suffer respiratory infections. Incidences of sore throat, cold, pneumonia and asthma are quite common.