BackSlaughterhouses may soon have to secure environment clearances
Govt considers tightening pollution control norms for slaughterhouses and making environment clearance mandatory for them, says an official
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New Delhi: Slaughterhouses may have to secure environment clearances and adhere to strict pollution control norms, with the government planning to curb pollution at these places.
“The environment ministry has got so many complaints about the huge pollution from these slaughterhouses. We are proposing to tighten pollution control norms for slaughterhouses and make environment clearance mandatory for them," said a senior official of the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF).
The ministry believes the move could be a game-changer in controlling pollution at slaughterhouses.
As per official data, there are around 4,000 legal and over 36,000 illegal slaughterhouses across the country. All major Indian cities have central slaughterhouses which are 50-70 years old and lack proper flooring, ventilation, water supply, lair age and transport.
Most of them have poor hygiene standards, despite the meat processing industry being worth billions of rupees in India. Poor hygiene, in turn, poses huge public health and environmental danger due to indiscriminate waste disposal and highly polluted effluent discharge.
“At present, slaughterhouses are covered by rules prescribed by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). So, it’s not like that there are no rules, but their enforcement largely remains unsatisfactory. So, we are not only proposing to tighten norms with steps like zero liquid discharge, but we are also trying to bring them under 24X7 monitoring," the official explained.
The zero liquid discharge system completely eliminates water discharge from an industry. It will promote recycling and reuse of waste water by the industry.
With unscientific waste disposal polluting land, air and water and leading to health concerns among residents in the vicinity, the environment ministry is considering whether slaughterhouses should be moved to sparsely inhabited areas outside cities, besides enforcing pollution norms more strictly, rather than allowing them in densely populated regions.
Waste from slaughterhouses largely includes stomach and intestine contents of animals, dung, animal matter like meat trimmings and bones. Liquid waste like blood from animals, urine and internal fluids often gets mixed with water used to wash the place, leading to water pollution.
In the past few months, the Prakash Javadekar-led environment ministry has come out with a series of measures to control pollution from industries and install real-time pollution monitoring systems.
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