Karachi slaughterhouses: Under the knife

Karachi’s voracious appetite for meat and those who feed on it

There is one golden rule at the two slaughterhouses in Karachi — the animal should walk into the facility. If it falls or falters on the way, it will be sent back. This is the principle which governs the thriving meat business in the city that officially consumes at least 1,200 cows and buffaloes and around 3,000 to 4,000 smaller animals, such as goats and sheep, on an average each day. There is, however, a long arduous process that these animals go through before they end up as a succulent piece of meat on your plate. 

Know your food chain

Officially, there are two slaughterhouses in Karachi — the City Abattoir Cattle Colony in Landhi and the New Karachi slaughterhouse — which are also referred to as kamailas. While both slaughterhouses are primarily run by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), the Landhi slaughterhouse is being run by a private contractor — the Multix International Corporation — for the past 15 years. Under the contract, KMC receives 60% of the collected revenue while the rest goes to the private firm.

A loader washing chopped meat with water inside the slaughterhouse. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN 

According to Dr Ashfaq Ali, the KMC director of veterinary services, the abattoir in Landhi, spread over 31 acres of land is the largest in the country and employs 130 KMC personnel. The New Karachi slaughterhouse, which is much smaller, takes up only two acres and has 30 staff members. Both the kamailas are closed on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays to control the shortage of animals in the country. The Landhi slaughterhouse, from where most of the meat is supplied to markets and retailers, works in two shifts. The night shift, in which buffaloes, cows, goats and sheep are slaughtered, operates between 12am to 9am. The day shift, which only deals in buffaloes, operates between 12pm to 6pm. Meanwhile, the New Karachi slaughterhouse only operates during the night. 

Where do the animals come from?

Both slaughterhouses procure their supply from all over the country, mostly from Punjab and Upper Sindh, which arrive in trucks carrying up to 35 cows and buffaloes at a time. Within walking distance from the Landhi abattoir is the Perhi Ground where the animals exchange hands from the vendors to the traders who buy the stock to be slaughtered. The market is set up twice every 24 hours — in the evening before the night shift and early in the morning for the day shift. The traders who buy these animals then hand them over to the local marshals who look after the animals until the gates of the kamaila open.

Mini-trucks waiting outside the slaughterhouse to transport the meat pieces to Clayton Market, Guru Mandir. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN 

The nearby cattle farms also sell their animals at the Perhi. “If a buffalo or cow gives milk [whose market value is] less than its daily food expenditure, it must go to the slaughterhouse,” explains Muhammad Moosa, a resident of Sajawal who works at a cattle farm near the abattoir. Moosa and his three other colleagues milk 300 cows and buffaloes at the farm, three times a day. “The owner cannot afford to keep the animal if its milk production drops. It just has to go,” he says.

Slaughter and examination

When the gates are opened, people take their animals inside the slaughterhouse after paying the government-prescribed fee of Rs65 for each buffalo and cow and Rs13 for goats and sheep. “Although healthy animals are slaughtered in the kamaila, there should be some veterinary doctors to examine the animals,” suggests Mohammad Ahsan, who gets five buffalos slaughtered daily. A medical examination of animals and meat is a pre-requisite according to the KMC by-laws. However, Dr Ali shares that there are only two doctors stationed at the city abattoir in Landhi — one for each shift — whereas there should be at least 12 of them. There is no post-slaughter examination of the animals either. Similarly, since there is no laboratory at the slaughterhouse, the vets take liver and blood samples of randomly selected animals for examination at the laboratory in Bhains colony during the outbreak of a virulent disease.

A loader carrying a leg-piece to load it in the mini-truck. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN 

The room where the actual slaughter takes place is a long, wide concrete hall with steel pipes fixed along its pillars that help the kamaildar or head-butcher and his assistants chop the animal into four pieces. The pipes have strong iron hooks on which legs are hung to be washed. The KMC provides an annual licence to butchers for a nominal fee of Rs100, most of whom have acquired the skill from their forefathers. The kamaildar charges Rs200 per cow or buffalo, a price that can be reduced to Rs150, depending on the number of animals that are to be slaughtered.

Loaders tying meat pieces in a Suzuki van. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN 

“It takes 10 minutes to slaughter the animal, peel off its skin, and cut it into four pieces,” says Sohail Qureshi, a butcher at the kamaila. After the slaughter, the KMC employees stamp the meat with a special ink in three different places, marking the meat as legal and fit for human consumption. These stamps increase the market value of the meat and relieve the businessmen from paying bribes to the police on the way to the market.

Loading and transportation

The labourers who load the meat on the transport vehicles, rinse it with clean water before hanging it onto the mini-trucks and Suzuki vans and charge Rs200 per animal. The meat is usually hung because it helps improve the flavour by allowing the natural enzymes to break down. Once upon a time, the KMC ran its own refrigerated vehicles. Now, they have been replaced by simple trucks run by private transporters. There are 35 mini-trucks and 13 Suzuki vans in the abattoir to transport the meat. The trucks leave the abattoir at a prescribed time and reach the market in less than an hour. “All the vehicles leave the abattoir at the same time so that the meat reaches the market at the same time and prices are maintained,” says Ali. Almost five hours after the animal has been slaughtered, the meat reaches the shopkeepers from where it may be purchased by consumers.

A 10-wheeler truck carrying buffaloes is entering the Pehri ground where the buffaloes will be unloaded. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN 

The side-products, including the intestines, stomach, siri paye (legs), blood, bones and fat is sold inside the abattoir. Each item has its own dealers, including skins. Collectively, these side-products sell for Rs8,000 per animal. “All these side-products are already sold before the animal is slaughtered,” Ali elaborates. In the end, only the dung is left behind, which is flushed out with water. KMC sweepers stationed in the drainage canal push it along the drainage channel with their spades and direct it towards the sea. With the end of each shift, the slaughterhouse is taken over by the sweepers who clean up thoroughly before the next shift begins. Nevertheless, the conditions in which these employees work are appalling. For instance, even though there is enough supply of water to the abattoir, the labourers and butchers drink and bathe in the same water that is used to rinse the meat.

The wholesale market and its butchers

The Clayton market is the main meat wholesale arcade in the city. Meat from the day shift reaches the market around 2:30pm, where it is eagerly awaited by hundreds of scavenger birds and flies in addition to the wholesalers and shopkeepers. Though the official price of meat is set by the KMC, there is a slight difference between the price of meat with white fat and that with yellow or reddish fat. According to the businessmen at the market, buffalo meat is sold at Rs8,000 to Rs10,000 per mund (40 kilogrammes). Meat of a young bull can fetch up to Rs11,000 while the most coveted meat, that of a young cow, usually sells for over Rs12,000 per mund.

A mini-truck loaded with heading towards the wholesale markets. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN 

At this market, the slaughtered meat is rid of unnecessary fat and bones and also squared into smaller pieces for the hotels. The fat is sold for Rs1,500 per mund and has its own dealers. Each dealer at the Clayton market has his own stall where the meat is hung off the hooks for processing. “We pay Rs6,000 to the government annually for each stall,” says Ikram Qureshi, who followed his father into the business and has been running his stall for the last 25 years. “There is, however, no system to clean the market and we do it ourselves. Every butcher has to clean his own stall and the area in front of it before leaving the market every day.” Ikram and his peers supply the meat to retailers and roadside establishments across the city.





Each butcher is paid Rs1,200 per week and most work for more than one dealer. The market closes for business at around 5:30pm once the meat reaches the shops who sell it to the consumers. The New Karachi slaughterhouse and the night shift of the City Abattoir Cattle Colony in Landhi directly supply meat to retailers across the city, including those at Saddar’s Empress Market, Laiquatabad No 2, Soldier Bazaar and Sitara Market in Ranchore line.

Illegal slaughter and pressure meat

Despite the ban on slaughtering animals outside the two government-run abattoirs, hundreds of animals are slaughtered across Karachi on the streets and at cattle farms, mostly during the night. In Bhains Colony, horses and donkey carts can be seen pulling loads of animals with sliced throats. KMC officials, who are responsible for controlling the practice, admit to this blatant violation of rules and blame it squarely on the local police and political parties.



“In every area, animals are slaughtered in the backstreets but we can’t take action because the police do not cooperate with us,” complains Dr Ali. “Sometimes we confiscate the animals and meat, which is later sent to philanthropic institutions or to the zoo, after examination. He narrates the example of a raid at Anda Mor where their team found themselves surrounded by armed activists of a political party.



Pressure meat is also associated with illegal slaughtering, but all the butchers in the market and the smaller shops prefer to keep mum about it. According to Ahsan and Sohail, the butchers who slaughter their own animals in the streets, put water pipe into the urinary ducts of the animal and let it absorb the water. “The water increases the weight of the meat by up to 40kg in a single animal,” he explains. “More often than not, the water in such cases is contaminated and the meat becomes harmful for humans.”



“We slaughter the bachiya (young cow) ourselves, but we have to hang a leg or two transported from the kamaila to show the police or deputy commissioner who sometimes raid the shop,” shares a local butcher at Keamari, on the condition of anonymity. He, however, denies selling pressure meat or the meat of sick or dead animals, saying that they only slaughter the animals in the street to meet customer demands. It is no secret, however, that as long as the city has a steady appetite, legal and illegal sources who feed on it will not sleep on empty stomachs either.

Sohail Khattak is a correspondent for The Express Tribune Karachi desk. He tweets @razakhattak

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, November 16^th, 2014.