Beware! You may be eating adulterated chicken

More often than not, it is difficult to know if the food you’re eating is of good quality or not. Bringing this fear to life, evidence has come of the city becoming a lucrative spot for the sale of adulterated food including poultry.

Traders are supplying products much below the market rate and disease-infested chicken to prominent city hotels. Shopkeepers in Balkampet, Nampally, Old City, Secunderabad and Madhapur areas are purchasing dead chicken from these traders and selling to hotels, making good money in the bargain. Such shady activities are taking place in areas where (allegedly) no GHMC vigil is maintained.

Officials of the GHMC seem to be in deep slumber and are miserably failing in detecting such undesirable practices which impact public health. In addition, many chicken shops in these areas lack GHMC licences.

Consumers of such chicken meat can fall prey to serious ailments, warn doctors. Dead chicken are being sold in Nampally at half the price of the healthy variety. Chickens to the city are supplied mostly from Medak, Shadnagar and Choutuppal areas.

“The blood of dead chicken turns black and eating it causes neurological ailments, besides cholera and some long-term diseases,” prominent physician Papa Rao told The Hans India.

Out of over one lakh chicken shops in the city, only about 2,000 have licences. This clearly indicates the lethargy of GHMC officials in checking trade practices.

According to GHMC officials, there are 2,900 licenced chicken and mutton shops in the Corporation limits. They told The Hans India that cases were registered against 1,026 chicken and 960 mutton shops in 2016-17. In spite of this, unlicensed chicken shops are mushrooming in the city.

Chief Veterinary Officer of GHMC Venkateshwar Reddy said that 1,879 cases were registered against the shops, many of them for transacting business without permission and Rs 4.15 lakh collected as fine. “Owners of such shops were produced before the concerned magistrate,” he informed.

Elaborating on the Corporation’s irresponsibility, Padmanabha Reddy of the Forum for Good Governance told The Hans India that there is no vigil on any shop selling meat in the city. He pointed out that as against the requirement of over 30 health inspectors in the twin cities, there are only three.

Reddy stated that despite many complaints to the GHMC on the illegal activities of chicken and meat shop-keepers no action has been taken against them. He warned that the government should immediately notify the health inspectors; otherwise there would be a threat to public health.

By B Lingaswamy