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| Monday, 21 January 2002 |
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Letters | |
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A motorist who brings a patient to this hospital cannot accompany the patient as he has no permission to park the vehicle in the hospital premises and he also has no space to park outside with a number of tri-shaws occupying the roadside when only 5 tri-shaws are enough for any time on the roadside the others can be parked on some lane close by, Also, the place on the eastern corner of the Hospital premises occupied by a transformer and now vacant can be used as a car park. The Eastern gate of the Hospital should be open as an exit, preventing congestion at the West Gate. M At this time when the Colombo Municiple Council has announced its plans to set up a modern abattoir for what it calls the "humane slaughter" of cattle and goats, and sparked a controversy that is just beginning to agitate the Buddhist public, it would be instructive to read some reports that emanate from the international press and the internet on what actually is going on in these kinds of slaughterhouses. In a dispatch to the Lankaweb posted in May 2001, a Sri Lankan engineer by the name of Seneviratna gives an eyewitness account of this process of "humane slaughter". "The animal is prodded and led with electric probes to a killing station where it is hit on the head with a slug fired from a high pressure compressed air powered metal bold. It is immediately made to dangle from a chain wrapped around one of its legs. The animal is now suspended in mid air and is sent in a long conveyor called a bleed chain to the processing floor. The animal is still not quite dead. It is jerking and twitching while slowly dying. The urinary bladder is punctured next with a spike allowing the bladder to drain. The urine that is drained to the floor is collected into large tanks and is processed to extract nutrients for the agricultural industry and the water is purified and used in the factory for washing purposes. While the conveyor is moving, three of the feet and the tail are cut and dropped into (other) conveyors. The skin around the neck is cut next, and the skin around the legs and the stomach. The skin is wrapped around two slowly revolving drums completely without any damage (to the skin), pulled out of the body and rolled out, then sent to special factories that process them into leather jackets, shoes and hand bags that we all use. The head is then cut off and hung from a special conveyor where the brian is pulled out, the tongue is cut off, the horns are sheared, eye balls and whatever else and the meat are pulled out, then sent through a head wash cabinet where it is further processed until only the bones are left. The carcass in the meantime gets opened, the stomach contents, liver and heart are spilled onto a conveyor, the fourth leg is cut off, the carcass is split in the middle and the two halves are sent for preparing supermaket-ready meats. The stomach contents in the meantime are separated to (1) eaten and digested foods and (2) eaten but not digested foods. The undigested food is reprocessed to be made into a type of grass biscuit to be fed to living cattle so they can be grown to slaughter size. The digested food of course produces waste and this is taken out separately to make fertiliser. The guts are washed and used for making sausages. The bones that are left behind after removing all the meat is washed, steamed and ground to a fine powder which goes into making gelatine and gel caps (for medicinal purposes). While all this is going on the blood keeps pouring out of the carcass to the floor. This is routed through the floor of the factory which is lined with good grade stainless steel sheet to large tanks, where it is purified and heated; water is extracted and the blood is made into tiny crystals and shipped to cosmetics manufacturers. The cold creams, skin ointments and the lipsticks that human beings apply on their face, body and the lips need a base that is compatible with the human body. Yes, you guessed right. All cold creams, body creams, lipsticks use pig and cow blood as the base." Let me end with a quote from Joby Warrick, staff writer of the Washington Post, who wrote a lengthy and well-researched article datelined April 10, 2001 on the same subject. It take 25 minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the modern slaughterhouse where Ramon Moreno works. For 20 years, his post was "second-legger," a job that entails cutting hocks off carcasses as they whirl past at a rate of 309 an hour. The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren't. "They blink. They make noises," he said softly. "The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around." "In plants all over the United States, this happens on a daily basis," said Lester Friedlander, a veterinarian and formerly chief government inspector at a Pennsylvania hamburger plant. "I've seen it happen. And I've talked to other veterinarians. They feel it's out of control". Prof. Mahinda Palihawadana With the change of government a new era dawned for the people of Sri Lanka with a hope of peace, prosperity and free movement of transportation. While driving along the city roads with no signs of unwanted barricade and restrictions placed on the way of travel and the city roads being recently rehabilitated with asphalt by the C.M.C. it was a pleasure to motor along those roads. In recent times there has been a massive improvement in the road infrastructure and traffic management on our city roads. The Mayor and his officials must be commended for a job well done in such a short time. It is very important that the other agencies such as Sri Lanka Telecom, Water Board, Electricity etc who very often dig up roads to bury cables etc, should co-ordinate their activities with the C.M.C. Colombo stands ahead from among the cities in South Asia. It is very necessary that every sector of society, the business sector, the NGOs civil society and all others should join together in cooperating and assisting the local authority. Let us hope that in this new era the commendable work of the Council will be accelerated as the Government in power at the centre will be cooperating and assisting all future projects of the Council R. Bandula The method of selection to the Universities that the University Grants Commission is going to adopt this year is not clear and as a result the candidates as well as their parents are confused by different rumours spreading. They will be relieved of their mental agony if the UGC will publish the method of selection clearly with answers to the following questions: 1. Are the district rank and the island rank calculated on the basis of the total marks or the average or the Z score? 2. How many places are available for different courses? 3. What are the percentages to be selected on the basis of the island rank and the district rank? 4. Last year, the district of a candidate was taken as the district from which the candidate has sat for the GCE (O/L) examination. How is the district determined this year? 5. When did the UGC inform the candidates of the changes to the mode of selection or to the definition of the district of a candidate? Please give the date of the gazette notification or the press notification or the circular to the schools. A.D. GUNASEKERA, |
 
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