THE stench of rotten meat in Punjab is spreading and has seemingly reached Karachi. The social media and the news channels have been abuzz with reports about eateries and shops being sealed over the issue of dubious quality meat, the commodity being seized and people selling it being arrested. If Punjab became infamous for donkey meat and pork allegedly being offered for consumption, Sindh won’t be left behind either. We must also make a name for ourselves; dog and snake meat just might get us there.

Where Punjab has provincial Food Minister Bilal Yaseen, Punjab Food Authority Director Operations Ayesha Mumtaz, or Livestock Department Deputy District Officer Dr Rahat Ali, Karachi has deputy commissioners whizzing around town conducting raids. It was said that during the recent crackdown the butcheries at Empress Market had been sealed. But follow any well-fed cat in the area and it will lead you to where the cleavers are still at work and the knives are still carving cuts out of the carcasses hanging from hooks.

Take a look: The real meat

“No, no the market wasn’t sealed,” says one butcher selling beef and proudly pointing out the violet stamp on it. “They just paid us a visit and during inspection realised that several shops here were selling veal, which they said isn’t ok since the animals are too young to be butchered. What I have is beef, perfectly legit,” he beams.

Behind him, at another shop, a couple of animal leg cuts sway from the hooks. One looks like mutton from the size of it but the other one is bigger, though not big enough to be beef. “It’s veal, sister,” the butcher tells me. And how did he survive the visit or raid? “I’m a rickshaw driver. I bring only as much as I can sell. I will soon have the ribs, cubes and mince ready for delivery to my regular customers, which I do myself. You see, beef is Rs200 and over for a kilogramme, and veal is only Rs100. Restaurants demand it so that they can pass it off as mutton. I also deliver it to several homes that feed it to their dogs.”

When asked where he gets it from, he smiles. “From somewhere near the regular slaughterhouses in Bhains Colony, Sohrab Goth or Mawachh Goth,” he says, adding a justification: “Look, the livestock owners are doing this themselves. But they only slaughter male calves, which can be a burden, drinking up to six litres of their mother’s milk. The females, of course, are bred.”

Another butcher has his own assessment about the drive in Punjab. “The government wants to export meat and with Bakra Eid just around the corner, there is a bit of a shortage of animals for slaughter. So they raised this issue about the meat here not being good enough for consumption or it coming from wild boar and donkeys, to put people off meat so that it can be exported,” he laughs.

“It is happening, too,” interrupts his colleague. “But you go to Lyari and inquire about the price of a donkey. At over a lakh, they are more expensive than bulls and cows. That’s where the dead donkeys, horses and dogs come in.

They are cut to look like beef or mutton and sold by the sweepers and janitors responsible for the disposal of carcasses. Some of us, on the other hand, are only guilty of fulfilling certain specific demands of our customers.

“For instance, some parts of the cow’s stomach or intestines are wanted by foreigners to make sausages. They are also exported, and they’re used to make surgical thread. Then we also get several Chinese customers with iceboxes in hand. They buy everything,” the butcher says. “We have snake charmers bringing us snakes all the time and the Chinese are willing to pay us in the thousands for such delicacies.”

“The news channels and the social media just exaggerate things,” says Saif Saleem, manager of popular eatery Student Biryani, one of whose outlets had been reported as having been sealed. “No, it wasn’t sealed. Our branch in Gulshan-i-Iqbal was fined for keeping coal in a sack instead of storing it in a proper bin. Another eatery right next to ours was fined for not using good quality ginger. There was no issue of meat with us. We are all big names keeping our good reputations intact. If the authorities in Karachi want to share the limelight for holding successful raids like those in Lahore, they’ll have to look elsewhere.”

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2015

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