Ban use of slaughterhouse by-products: AWBI
By Varinder Singh
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, Sept 5 — To protect lakhs of healthy agriculture cattle from being slaughtered, the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) has favoured a complete ban on the use of by-products of slaughter houses.

In the National Agriculture Cattle (Preservation, maintenance and flourishment) policy ,formulated by the AWBI, the board has urged the union government to make the sale, purchase and disposal of blood and fresh oil of agriculture cattle a cognisable offence and to prohibit medicines based on animal organs.

The board has observed that as blood, fresh oil, bones fetch huge price to butchers due to large scale use of these products by pharmaceutical companies for the purpose of making medicines and fine quality soaps, more and more cattle were being slaughtered in abattoirs, resulting in a threat of depletion of agriculture cattle.

"Even as 80 per cent of population, 67 per cent of agriculture activities and 57 per cent of transportation depend on agriculture, the widespread meat eating, meat exports have led to indiscriminate slaughter of animals. The situation is so horrible that the ratio of cattle has decreased from 430 in 1951 to 202 in the year 1991. People might not be knowing that 30 million agriculture cattle and 100 million sheep, goats, and pigs are being killed annually in thousands of legal and illegal slaughter houses in the country," said the policy, which is to be tabled by the board in the next session of the Parliament so that it could be implemented all over the country.

Expressing concern at the steady depletion of cattle, the policy has stressed the need to preserve, maintain and flourish cattle so that agriculture need could be fulfilled. It has also criticised the central government for framing policies aimed at encouraging meat and leather export, which have increased from Rs 28 crore in 1961 to Rs 5790 crore in 1995 in case of meat export and from Rs 1 crore 1961 to Rs 627 crore in 1995 in case of leather export.

"Several facilities being extended by the government to meat export units have proved to be a curse on valuable national wealth of healthy agriculture, which in turn has lead to a severe scarcity of milch cattle, non-availability of cow dung used as fuel and manure due to which cutting of trees and pollution has increased, " said the policy, suggesting the government to close down all abattoirs and to stop export of meat and skin without any further delay.

The board has felt that though most of states have promulgated laws, prohibiting slaughter of agriculture cattle, these were not strong enough to deal with organised butchers, who take full advantage of many loopholes in these laws

"latest supreme court judgements also unfortunately result in slaughter of lakhs of calves and bullocks. The strong basis of law must be on the principle that no agriculture cattle is uneconomic and useless due to valuable dung and urine provided by them. Thus they should be saved under Article 33-C and by including this in Ninth Schedule of the constitution, as after that these could not be challenged under the guise of fundamental right," the policy maintained.

The board has also expressed concern over flourishing of calf leather business in domestic and international markets, where calf leather fetched high prices and has sought the sale-purchase, manufacturing and marketing of calf skins as a cognisable offence,with a heavy punishment to offenders.

The cattle policy has opined that though cattle might be brought and sold and in that sense individuals might be owners of particular cattle heads,cattle are a social property, owned by the society at large for its benefit. "The right to slaughter cattle and for that purpose the right of selling and buying cattle should not be an absolute right, as is in case of a full grown tree standing in private land could not necessarily be cut only by virtue of ownership," adds the policy favouring the constitution of a cattle commission, empowered to stop slaughter of animals.

As the use of chemical fertilisers have made the use of cowdung and cattle redundant, the board has stressed that the use of cow dung manure, in a modern way should be encouraged, which in turn would save lakhs of cattle from being butchered. "The problem is so enormous that we had to spend Rs 29,839 crore on the import of fertilisers from 1961 to 1995 and in addition to this a whopping sum of Rs 4500 crore were spent on the purchase of raw material like naphtha and rock sulphur during 1992-93 only, in spite of being well aware that chemical fertilisers were harmful to soil . Billions of rupees could be saved if we effectively use cattle manure," added the policy seeking a complete ban on use of chemical fertilisers.

The policy said farmers had a wrong notion that chemical fertilisers could increase the yield and that is why use of such fertiliser has increased from 2 kg per acre in 1961 to 53 kg per acre in 1991. As a first step towards the direction of making cattle manure popular, the board has given financial assistance to seven model goshalas, where farmers would be trained to prepare cowdung manure with scientific methods, the policy said.

In addition to this, the policy has suggested that to prevent illegal transportation of cattle to slaughter houses, a provision should be made so that vehicles carrying such animals should be forfeited or impounded.

Moreover, what is needed to be done is to regulate 'pashu mandis' so that only genuine purchaser could buy cattle for agriculture or for getting milk and not butchers in the guise of farmers. To achieve this end, no railway facility should be provided for the transportation of agriculture cattle to slaughter houses in violation of law, said the policy advocating an amendment to the Cruelties to Animals Act to discourage animal fights and the use of injections for deriving milk, the policy suggested.

Pulse polio drive in October
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, Sept 5 — An intensive programme has been chalked out by the Chandigarh Administration to administer pulse polio drops to 1.30 lakh children up to 5 years in the city during the four rounds of pulse polio immunisation in October. in a recent study done by the reproductive and child health (RCH) project, the immunisation coverage (against six vaccine preventable diseases, including polio) in the Union Territory is one of the highest compared to the rest of the country.

The achievements of the immunisation programme in the city are as follows:three doses of polio, over 70 per cent; BCG, about 85 per cent; three doses of DPT, over 81 per cent and measles, over 80 per cent. But the percentage of children who are fully protected against the six vaccine preventable diseases is only about 62.

The RCH study also indicates that the vaccine immunisation coverage of female children is lower than that of the male child, as it was found that over 68 per cent of the male children as against about 54 per cent of female children were fully immunised.

Meanwhile, the Administration, while stating its pulse polio campaign,has said that in order to achieve maximum targets, instead of two rounds like last year, this time there would be four founds spreading over a period of three days each. Also, the city would have 350 posts for pulse polo immunisation, which would include 200 in the urban areas, 90 in colonies, 40 in villages and 20 in mobile vans.

For this purpose, the Union Territory has been divided into three zones, each zone having one zonal officer and 100 to 120 pulse polio immunisation posts under him.

On the immunisation status of the children in the rural and urban areas of the city, the RCH study indicates that some 50 per cent of the rural children have been given the polio dosage,compared to the 83 per cent in the rural areas. And predictably, about 60 per cent of the children receive their vaccination from the government health facility centres, in both rural and the urban sectors.

Interestingly, the reasons for not immunising children have largely been recorded as people being unaware of the need for the same.

This year, the campaign for pulse polio will include teams of doctors going from house to house to administer polio drops to left-out children, on the second and the third day.

The Administration, besides planning to include non-government organisations (NGOs) in the campaign, will also take out rallies of children from October 2 to 15 for spreading the message of the campaign.