THE working paper prepared by a governmental body on the conditions of local slaughterhouses has proved to be as transparent and shocking. The paper submitted to the Chamber of Food Industries, substantiating the need to issue a unified food safety law and to establish a supervisory board, has bluntly described the available slaughterhouses as “dirty places for torturing animals”. As such, they have openly violated rules of slaughtering established by the Sharia (Islamic law), which stipulate cleanliness and merciful slaughtering. According to the paper, the 450 functioning slaughterhouses across the country are not internationally accredited, simply because they do not comply with standard specifications at a time when Ethiopia has three recognised state-of-the-art slaughterhouses. Other than the Ain Sokhna slaughterhouse in the coastal city of Suez, they are all operated manually and have no cooling facilities. In view of such revelations, Australia's refusal to ship livestock to Egypt in recent years should be quite understandable, despite official denial of the appalling standards of slaughterhouses. Studies on which the paper has relied have shown that the rates of pollution, effected during the processes of slaughtering, skinning and transporting, are far in excess of the allowed bacterial margins. Research carried out by specialised departments in the university faculties of veterinary have indicated that every gram of meat bears around 66 million microbes by the time it reaches the butchers' in Egypt. No wonder then that the rate of pollutionrelated diseases in this country is so high. The information disclosed by all means prompts a bill to safeguard the safety of food in the local market. Doubting the quality of food consumed is one thing and knowing for sure that meat among other items is as contaminated as it has been described is a totally different matter.
