Monday 28 November 2011


FEATURE STORY
Do you know how funny a person and his/her family would wake in the morning, have their bath and would be ready to eat breakfast not caring on how the meat appeared in the market for the parents to be able to purchase it and how it got to the market in the very first place, all they care about is the meat they can see on their plates and how well they are going to devour the meat, while so much work as been done just to get the meat out of the flesh of an animals and how it has been packaged for distributions to shops where they can buy the item, the place where the killing of the animal is done known as the ABATTOIR.
There are different sections in an abattoir and they include sections for meat packaging, meat packing, and distribution of carcass to retailer. The reason for creating a site where killing of the animals can be done was simply because of the high demand of meat, and most abattoirs are located in areas that are surrounded by water as this is to allow free flow of the remains of the animal’s body into the water which in turn causes water pollution to the neighboring communities or places, not only does it cause water pollution it also disturbs the free flow of frequency of the river. In an interview with a lecturer in Covenant University, Engineer D.O Omole, he enlightened us on the effects of abattoir to the velocity of the water. According to him, during his masters programme he chose to do the research work on this topic in developing countries saying that from his observations, there has arisen a degradation of the environment as a result of too much waste load going into the river. Usually, a river purifies itself from waste, however, when the waste becomes too much, then the river can no longer purify itself making the water unsafe for any form of use.
Ways to stop this pollution include introduction of the Bio-gas measures to purify the odour that comes from the abattoir site but for abattoirs that have bio-gas system they can make use of the waste as a means of getting something useful out of the animals blood, carcass, or bones. For instance the blood of  several animals can be used for preparation of pig food, fish food and many other animal food, the carcass can be used as fertilizers to nourish the food for the crops to grow. These are some of the positive ways to neutralize the negative side of the abattoir.
There are laws and regulations that have been put in place for the running of an abattoir but in Nigeria, the rules and regulations laid down by the government have not been followed because this people working in the abattoir need the money to take care of their family. So to them, it is a means of income even if the smell of the environment is hazardous to their health. In a research done in the USA on how jobs are created for the unemployed in the country, over 52,700 workers can be useful in an Abattoir without care about the risks as a result of this work.  
The government should try and refacilitate several abattoirs in their countries so as to not only monitor the way they are doing things but also to help the families of those people working in the abattoir because as the saying goes “ if a man is satisfied he tends to do his job more than expected.



















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