Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Treat animals kindly' that was published in Newsband

Treat animals kindly

Cruelty meted out to animals and birds while transporting them from one place to another for slaughter is a horrible sight. This is not allowed under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. It is about time that the municipal bodies got tough against such illegal acts. There is no formal slaughterhouse within the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation jurisdiction, which is why the illegal chicken and goat killings are taking place in a haphazard and unscientific manner.

Meanwhile, there is already a global movement towards vegetarianism and vegan lifestyle as more and more people are shunning meat.

Kanpur Municipal Corporation (KMC) had recently sealed two slaughter houses. At that time, one of the workers of this slaughter house said that government should first provide employment to people like him who are dependent on these slaughter houses and then shut them down. He said that the sealing of the slaughter houses by the state government will render several of them jobless.

The Uttar Pradesh government had also cracked down only against illegal slaughter houses. At that time, Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that what is being done in Uttar Pradesh is on illegal slaughter houses and that they didn’t want anything illegal. The Minister also said there was drop of 8.87 per cent in buffalo meat export in 2015-16 in comparison to 2014-15 which was due to various factors, one of them being China not giving access to its markets to various Indian goods, including buffalo meat.

A few days back, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also directed police officials to prepare an action plan for closure of slaughter houses across the state. He also ordered a blanket ban on smuggling of cows and said zero tolerance would be exercised in this regard. The BJP manifesto had said that all the illegal slaughter houses would be closed and there would be a blanket ban on all the mechanised slaughter houses.

Due to cow smuggling, dairy-based industries have failed to flourish and there has been a fall in cattle count. Should this be enough justification for slaughter houses to be closed down?