TITLE:
Environmental and Health Impacts from Slaughter Houses Located on the City Outskirts: A Case Study
AUTHORS:
Abha Lakshmi Singh, Saleha Jamal, Shanawaz Ahmad Baba, Md. Manirul Islam
KEYWORDS:
Pollution, Environment, Illegal, Waste
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Environmental Protection,
Vol.5 No.6,
May
27,
2014
ABSTRACT: This
paper explores the location of slaughter houses in the city outskirts,
describes its functioning and explores its impact on the environment and health
of residents living in its vicinity. A medium sized city of North India,
Aligarh, was selected for the case study. The study is mainly based on primary
sources of data collected through survey of city ouskirts, slaughter houses,
villages and households located in its vicinity. For in-depth investigation, 2
slaughter houses located in the outskirts, 460 households living in the
vicinity of these slaughter houses (0 to 3 km) were randomly selected for
sampling. Data were collected with the help of questionnaire. Field surveys
revealed that there were innumerable authorized and unauthorized slaughter
houses inside the city, Makdoomnagar was the oldest one (1995), individual
households in many parts of the city were slaughtering animals in one room, the
city outskirts had 6 big slaughter houses and meat processing units and
innumerable open illegal ones. Investigations revealed that all the slaughter
houses suffer from very low hygienic standards posing both environment and
health hazards due to discrete disposal of waste, highly polluted effluent
discharge, burning and boiling of bones, hooves, fat, meat, etc. The results
show that for the residents living in the immediate vicinity of the slaughter
house, both the environmental conditions and their health conditions were worst.