You may be consuming unhealthy meat

 Be careful the next time you visit a butcher or are served meat at a restaurant in the capital. There is no guarantee that it comes from a healthy and safely butchered animal.

The recent incident at ITO where over 10 trucks were seized while illegally ferrying sick and dead animals exposed that butchers and restaurants in Delhi might be serving unsafe meat from illegally slaughtered animals.

On Friday, officials of the East Corporation also alleged that illegal slaughtering is rampant in the city which is dependent on its lone authorised abattoir at Ghazipur in east Delhi.
Leader of Opposition, East Delhi Municipal Corporation Varyam Kaur raised the issue in the Standing Committee meeting.

“Sick animals are being butchered at the Ghazipur slaughter house and the meat is being served at restaurants and food courts,” she added.

“The recent seizure of trucks shows that the municipal corporation officials are working in connivance with the private company and carrying out illegal slaughtering at Ghazipur,” she told Deccan Herald.

Director of Veterinary, East Corporation Dr Hari Lal said Delhi is a transit point. “Animals are brought here to be slaughtered at Ghazipur and then sent to Haryana, Punjab, Chandigarh and Uttar Pradesh,” he said.

“But there is no denying of the fact that some of the animals caught in that raid must have been brought here to be slaughtered at Ghazipur,” he added.

However, East Corporation spokesperson Yogendra Singh Mann said licensed meat shop owners are allowed to get their animals slaughtered at the abattoir.

“We have a health inspector at the slaughter house who checks whether the animals are sick or not. Only healthy animals are butchered here,” he added.

The Leader of Opposition said neither police nor corporation officials were vigilant enough to catch those trucks, but an NGO rescued over 500 cows and buffaloes as well as about 300 sheep and goats on Saturday night.

The NGO, People for Animals, said the rescued animals are kept at Sanjay Gandhi Animal Care Centre.

“We rescued 250 calves of which around 40 were dead, and another 30 have died as they were in such pathetic condition,” said Saurabh Gupta, spokesperson of the NGO.

“The illegal slaughtering is going on in Delhi since long. People transporting animals break the limbs of cattle to stuff as many cattle as possible in the truck. For them it’s business and the authorities have not yet woken up to this menace,” he added.