Wouri authorities are bent over eradicating clandestine slaughtering.

The fact that the slaughter of poultry, sheep, cow and calves is sometimes clandestine, Wouri divisional authorities call on the public to verify if the meat has been stamped ‘SODEPA’ before buying. The Divisional Delegate of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries in Wouri, Mimbang Guy Iréné, made the call following the persistence of clandestine slaughtering.

The delegation has carried out several operations during which meats issuing from clandestine slaughtering have been impounded and destroyed. The meats were either those that issued from clandestine slaughtering or those proven infected by veterinary tests. The Delegate says it is either the life animals were infected or the conditions of slaughter compromised hygiene, thus rendering them unfit for consumption. He stressed on the fact that infected animals have zoonosis which may be transmitted to consumers, and it is dangerous to health. “The practice of clandestine slaughtering inflames discomfort among Muslims who allow only the halal slaughtering of cattle, sheep and poultry which involves having their throats slit and the blood drained because the animal is ‘humane’, he noted.” Besides, most Islamic faithful in New Bell hold that the sickening abuse compromises their range of edible meat. It is for this reasons that the public is called upon to buy slaughtered meat only from recognised butchers- butchers whose meats bear the stamp ‘SODEPA’.

Clandestine slaughterers, he warned, are by law liable to be prosecuted because the practice is attached with the intention of selling the meat to the public.

The single abattoir in Douala, slaughters 600,000 cows and calves in a month, an average of 200 animals slaughtered in a day excluding some 10 donkeys slaughtered per week since 2015. In 2014, some 73,322 cows and calves, 9,472 sheep, 75,075 goat, 22,258 pigs and 1.2 million chickens were slaughtered by the SODEPA abattoir and municipal slaughter slaps in Douala.

Besides the regular inspection of animals to be slaughtered and those slaughtered in the single abattoir run by SODEPA in Bonendale, an outskirts neighbourhood of Douala, the slaughter house also detaches veterinary inspectors to slaughtering slaps by municipal councils like the poultry, goat, and sheep slaughtering slaps in the market of New Bell, Grand Hangar and Bonaberi, as well as a pig slaughtering slap in Ndokotti. The inspectors do disease diagnosis such as inspection before and after slaughter.

If ante mortem inspection shows some disease, the animal is treated and allowed until the drugs in it finishes before it can be slaughtered. If ante mortem shows no infection but after the slaughtering the internal parts show some infection the animal is immediately destroyed.