Fowl play


Zahrah Nasir July 21, 2010

Poultry farms in the Murree area have been accused of foul play by the Punjab Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which claims that 19 such farms are directly responsible, along with a number of other concerns, for dangerously high levels of bacterial pollution in Rawal Lake from which Rawalpindi draws most of its drinking water. The on/off Rawal lake furore is nothing new of course but what makes it different this time around is that an EPA official has come up with an environmentally catastrophic suggestion on how poultry farmers should deal with waste. The honourable gentleman, according to reports, says “Poultry farm owners should dump the waste in ditches and cover it with soil”.

Where on earth does this idiot think that bacteria from this waste is going to go when it rains, which it does reasonably often in the hills? Any right minded person knows, without having to be told, that the bacteria will slowly leach in to the surrounding soil and, gravity being what it is, seep down to enter aquifers and streams. It will not simply evaporate in a puff of magic smoke as the official, one wonders what kind of degree he has…if he has one at all, appears to imagine.

Furthermore, the sheer volume of waste produced by poultry farms on a daily basis would necessitate the un-environmentally friendly excavation of lines of ditches of a magnitude to compete with the Great Wall of China.

A series of warnings, issued to the offending poultry farms over the last few months, demanded that they adopt environmentally friendly waste disposal systems which, needless to say, as such a move requires investment thus reducing profits, was not done and the offenders have now been called to appear, heads in hands saying “Sorry sir. We’ve been bad boys” before the EPA’s head honcho who may, or may not, impose a fine or sent them straight to jail without stopping at the Parliament House.

Environmental protection is the need of the hour, some environmentalists’ claim that is far too late to save Rawal Lake which, they suggest, should be replaced in totality somewhere else (where and at what cost, with whom footing the bill is not mentioned), and bodies such as the EPA need to come up with viable, preferably profitable, solutions.

In the case of poultry farms this is easy: organic fertiliser is a difficult to find commodity in Pakistan, farmers being pushed to the wall, taking out loans to purchase unsustainable chemical fertilisers, usually in short supply during sowing seasons, instead.

Why not convince poultry farmers that they can mint money by processing waste into top quality, highly saleable organic fertiliser instead of dumping the stuff willy-nilly where ever they happen to have a vacant bit of land?

It shouldn’t take much to get on farm systems up and running or, alternatively, the EPA itself could set up premises and purchase the waste directly from the farms on a regular basis, doing something eminently sensible in the process which could, in the long run, help pay the organisations running costs instead of passing the entire responsibility over to the already over exploited, honest tax payers.

Alternatively, why not shut down every single poultry farm in the country as surely this particular food source should be ‘maccru’ at the very least? Chickens do have a hooked beak, have claws and happily eat meat along with some other fairly questionable stuff and, going by the book, this actually makes them ‘haram’ ‘non-kosher’ which information should provide grist for more than one mill.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 22nd, 2010.

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