Death for sale,horrible conditions in slaughter facilities

Thick, dark and dense smoke from burning lorry tyres made its way into the atmosphere. My eyes became teary from the smoke-inundated environment while my nose ran and I coughed intermittently. 

An offensive odour emanated from pools of blood of slaughtered animals that had been left unattended to, leaving the facility with unbearable stench. Businesses of flies were virtually having a field day as they gloated on the meat and blood clots in the facility.

 A number of bare-chested young men dragged slaughtered animals and meat from one point to the other, on the bare floor that had been contaminated with blood clots and other pollutants. I watched on as meat was thrown into the blazing fire prepared with lorry tyres.

This was the ugly sight that greeted me when I visited the slaughter slab at Turaku, a suburb of Ashaiman in the Greater Accra Region, on November 17, this year.

Located about three kilometres from Ashaiman, Turaku is one of the largest homes to hundreds of thousands of livestock that are transported from many parts of the country and neighbouring countries such as Mali and Burkina Faso for sale.

The slaughter facility in the area serves as a major source of meat supply to consumers in the Greater Accra Region and other parts of the country.

It was the seventh of slaughter facilities that I had visited on my mission to shed the light on the conditions under which animals are slaughtered and the meat prepared for consumption.