Fetid Iloilo slaughterhouse

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER

Whenever yours truly comes across the tarpaulin screaming “My City My Pride” with someone’s face grinning from ear to ear beside it, I can’t help but exclaim: “What?”

My City My Pride has the most fetid abattoir in all of Iloilo. It churns unsanitary pork that city residents consume unaware that the animals are slaughtered in unhygienic condition, their carcasses strewn on the floor mixing up with slime and sludge while being “cleaned”.

Oton, Pavia, San Miguel and Leganes towns, all adjacent to Iloilo City, enjoy the boom because of the wretchedness of the city slaughterhouse as consumers prefer to buy pork and beef processed by their respective abattoirs.

If you ate dinuguan from pork processed by the Iloilo slaughterhouse, better think twice. The blood and entrails are likely adulterated by hog wastes and human sweat. The city abattoir in neighboring Pavia town, not Jaro, Iloilo City as we are made to believe, doesn’t have sanitary and protective gears – gloves, boots, longsleeve shirts, aprons, hard hats and hair nets –for use by its personnel.

Abattoir personnel work in their slippers with bare hands and often, half naked. Hog owners grumble that the carcasses delivered to them are half-cleaned, with patches of hairs still remaining on the hides.

When I see tarpaulin streamers screaming My City My Pride with the face of one grinning from ear to ear, the fetid city slaughterhouse pops into my mind, which is the reason why the National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS) refuses to accredit it to this date.

When I see tarpaulin streamers screaming My City My Pride with the face of one grinning from ear to ear, the fetid city slaughterhouse pops into my mind, the reason why national agencies like the Department of Tourism can’t accredit hotels in Iloilo City “four star”, much less, “five star”.

When I see tarpaulin streamers screaming My City My Pride with the face of one grinning from ear to ear, the fetid city slaughterhouse pops into my mind, the reason why Ilonggos should be warned from consuming pork processed by the facility.

When I see tarpaulin streamers screaming My City My Pride with the face of one grinning from ear to ear, the fetid city slaughterhouse pops into my mind, the reason why Ilonggos should shun dinuguan in eateries in the city.

When the city fetid slaughterhouse pops into my mind, I am reminded of city veterinarian Dr. Tomas Forteza who managed it well, even spending his own money buying boots, caps, portable basis, buckets, hairnets and hard hats to ensure that all carcasses exiting the facility are clean.

During Forteza’s time as manager, the slaughterhouse has functioning mechanized conveyors that suspended the carcasses during the cleaning process.

Forteza is now back as city veterinarian, after he was unceremoniously booted out of the slaughterhouse on fabricated charges of corruption, and was replaced by an incompetent person whose first achievement was to wreck the conveyor chain and have the carcasses cleaned on the muddied floor.

When I see tarpaulins screaming My City My Pride, I am reminded of the grave risk to public health the fetid slaughterhouse exposes the city to. And it is the only facility in all of Iloilo that has no veterinarian supervising it.

When I see tarpaulins screaming My City My Pride, I am reminded of the better facilities of nearby Oton, Pavia and Leganes which processes animal meat that Iloilo City bars from entering.

When I see tarpaulins screaming My City My Pride, I am reminded of Passi City, 50 km. up north, which, in contrast, is the exclusive processor of one of the country’s biggest meat suppliers,  Monterey.

Passi built it at around the same year as Iloilo at the cost of only P45 million, or half that of My City My Pride.

When I see the author of My City My Pride slogan I am reminded of his first achievement after assuming his post in July 2010: he booted out Dr. Forteza and crew from the slaughterhouse and replaced them with a pack of nitwits who now supply us with unhygienic pork.

He still regales us with the canard of P100 million plus being infused to transform the slaughterhouse to “Triple A”, which means, My City My Pride is on its way to have “five star” hotels.