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GEORGE TOWN: Poultry traders in Penang are up in arms over the state government’s plan to end the slaughter in wet markets and by a foreign entity to centralize the supply of poultry, saying it is a monopoly that It would endanger the livelihoods of hundreds of local merchants.
Traders say the monopoly is not a solution to a supposed hygiene problem in wet markets. They also said their investment in machines for processing slaughtered birds would be wasted.
They urged the state government to reconsider the city council’s measure before it is implemented on March 1.
“Our customers come to the market looking for fresh poultry at affordable prices, not frozen meat straight from the freezer overnight,” said Azizur Rahman, director of a local meat supplier interest group.
The Penang Island City Council (MBPP) is reported to be building a poultry distribution center at Batu Lanchang and would phase out the slaughter of poultry in wet markets.
Ramesh K, a 20-year-old trader, questioned the freshness of the poultry slaughtered at the center. He said he had the best of slaughtering more than 1,000 fresh birds a day and cannot imagine the state of the poultry when they arrived at his store from downtown.
“That’s without taking into account that dozens of other traders will be waiting in line with me for our supply,” he said.
His colleague, Yakob Abdul Razak, called the plan to end the slaughter in the markets impractical.
“Given the demand that exists, your freezers are likely to be overloaded with more birds than they can deliver on time. Will that really mean less bacteria than poultry we air cool? ” he said
Another trader, Lee Chee Kwang, said his investment of RM50,000 in chicken slaughter machinery would go down the drain. “There are about 250 of us here in Penang state. Think about how much that costs in total. “
Azizur Rahman said the group strongly opposes the MBPP’s plans and had reservations about the lack of quality assurance and transparency.
Citing the recent scandal of a cartel passing off meat as “halal”, he said he couldn’t sell something for which he couldn’t answer. “We only know that the meat is legitimate when we have slaughtered it ourselves.”
He said that he and his fellow vendors were invited to a “discussion” at Komtar (the state government offices) last year. “However, it was not an argument. They told us that they were bringing a foreign company to slaughter and distribute the poultry so that we could sell them in freezers ”.
He also said that the state government only offered them one more alternative.
“Either we take the chilled poultry from this single distributor or we look for a supplier with all three certifications from Veterinary Health Mark, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, and the Islamic Development department.
He urged the government to establish slaughterhouses in each district and authorize poultry traders to slaughter the poultry themselves. “If hygiene is really the issue,” he said, “then give us a clean environment to trade.”
He told reporters that he hopes the government will reconsider this measure before it is implemented on March 1.
In a letter to the press last year, the president of the Penang Consumers Association, Mohideen Abdul Kader, had asked MBPP to introduce facilities that would allow poultry traders to continue to slaughter poultry in the traditional way, but in a clean and hygienic way.
