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THE broad contours of the story are sorry enough, and tell a sad tale of the state’s inattention to ecology and environmental protection. Those few groups and individuals who do so concern themselves have for years been warning about the severe degradation being suffered by Sindh’s Manchhar lake.
For nearly a century, the lake has suffered constant pollution, with concerns first being raised in the 1920s when the Main Nara Valley Drain was remodelled. Now, matters have come to such a pass that the residents around the water body call it the “dying lake”.
In the specifics of this story, though, emerges a stomach-churning picture that is replicated to a greater or lesser extent across the country. About three weeks ago, villagers found hundreds of fish, called daya in Sindhi, floating dead on the waters and caught up in the reeds on the shores.
When a Dawn journalist visited the lake a few days ago, she reported that “[t]hree kilometres away from the shore, the lake seems lifeless. The patch from where the daya were caught in bulk by the fishermen 10 days ago still has a few remnants of the fish caught in between wild plants. After floating a few more days, the dead fish will sink. The place reeks of their rotting remains”. The death in large numbers of the same species of fish has been reported from all four union councils surrounding the lake.
How can we ensure that herders feed livestock suitably?
Why the fish died is a moot point. It was reported on Jan 10 that a team of engineers of the irrigation department had started investigating. Questions asked by this newspaper’s reporter drew, variously, responses pointing the finger of blame at oil exploration work (the company says that it got the required Environmental Protection Agency approval), rising temperatures in the area and possibly, though unlikely, the use of chemicals by fishermen.
What was done with the fish is where my tale goes, beyond saying a prayer for the lake that is dying and affecting the living directly. One of the first people to notice the dead fish, Ghulam Nabi, gathered up as many of them as he could — it turned out to be 440 kilogrammes — and went to Hyderabad to sell them. There, the daya would have been dried, mixed with corn, rice and lentils, and then used as chicken feed. Like Nabi, many other fishermen did the same, gathering up large hauls of dead fish and selling them to be put into chicken feed.
As far as these poor fishermen are concerned, “dead fish is better than having nothing at all”. Still, whatever it was that killed all that quantity of fish is most likely now being fed to chickens that are overwhelmingly raised for slaughter. What the health risks are to the birds, and ultimately the people that consume them, are not just unknown, they don’t even appear to be part of any calculus at all.
This is unfortunate, but it’s hardly surprising. While on paper there is evidence of some sparse effort to ensure that what is available for people to eat is also safe to eat — laws about adulteration, for example, or the restaurant inspection system — in actual fact the field is pretty much left to its own devices. What factories put into animal feed can be checked, but how can a state as weak as Pakistan even begin to ensure that herders and growers across the country feed livestock suitably?
One article on one facet of the issue has stuck in my mind for years. Google the headline ‘Nauseating content of poultry feed threat to public health’ with this newspaper’s name and it’ll pop up. The account is of Karachi’s many unregulated blood and meat rendering units that create cheap sources of protein, calcium and phosphorous to add to poultry feed and fertiliser.
This is a non-nauseating way of saying that animal carcasses are basically boiled up in huge vats under which burn fires comprised of garbage and plastic, and — once glutinous and unrecognisable — are shovelled out on the ground to dry and be mixed into animal/bird meal. This report was published in 2008. Things are unlikely to have changed.
It’s bad enough to turn one vegetarian; but when buying vegetables, ponder the question of water pollution in Pakistan, and the many places where the mixing of raw sewage or industrial effluent in ‘clean’ water is well-documented. The industries of Kasur, for example, pollute heavily despite the on-and-off attempts at regulation and intervention, and the rural areas beyond this city and Lahore are still growers’ country.
But, well, this is Pakistan, after all, a place famous for being held together with spit and polish, revelling in life at the edge of the catastrophe curve. What can one do other than carry on and hope for the best? Other than, perhaps, switching to Wagyu.
The writer is a member of staff.
Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2015
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