dailyO
Variety

Ban on meat display: South Delhi civic body knows how to butcher a good idea

Advertisement
Tejinder Singh Bedi
Tejinder Singh BediJan 02, 2018 | 18:05

Ban on meat display: South Delhi civic body knows how to butcher a good idea

A recent announcement by the BJP-ruled South Delhi Municipal Corporation to enforce storage and/or sale of all non-vegetarian food items well-covered in shelves, has invoked wide-ranging reactions.

A large segment of the national capital population believe this to be a result of a thought process driven by hardcore propagandists of certain religious beliefs, and quite as many valuing the drive for hygiene of the food served across open-air vends.

Advertisement

However, some very basic questions seem to have been missed in this ideation, under whosoever's ideology.

While it is an acknowledged fact that there is a dire need to enforce strictest possible guidelines to ensure that the food items served to the common man are absolutely safe and hygienic, a distinction for just non-vegetarian items appears to have unnecessarily diluted the desired impact of an otherwise rational thought. After all, all the efforts of Swachh Bharat campaign do not just start and end with the management and/or disposal of wastes and scrap, but the "swachhta" (cleanliness) of mind, as well as inter-alia "swachhta" of food items, served or sold to the common public.

Let's look at how "gol gappas" are sold and served throughout the country by the roadside vends. Or how the vegetable and fruit vends sell even the fresh vegetables and fruits from such sources of supplies? The vegetables are generally covered with dirty patches of jute; wetted by water drawn from the sources nearest available? Maybe even from the nullahs (drains) flowing close by, or on the waysides. Even the sale and service of "fruit chat" by roadside vendors is not hygienic.

Advertisement

Going a little further away to the agricultural produce market committees (APMCs) anywhere in the country, the average state is just as repelling. Management and stocking of the fresh, as well as the perishable and fast-perishing stuff of food items, simply put is disgusting at first view. The state of hygiene at and around the abattoirs and butcheries (authorised or the unauthorised) is even more pitiable. All of this is not to ignore the monumental impact of the open-air dump yards that keep springing up in all nooks and corners of any residential society in our country.

Another very important question that arises automatically is whether the acknowledgment of sale and service of non-vegetarian food items by such vendors soliciting covered sale and service, will automatically grant them recognition as authorised or licensed suppliers in Delhi or elsewhere. And if that is to be so, should it not be the same for all other roadside vends in Delhi or elsewhere selling vegetables, fruits, chats, gol gappas etc?

Against that backdrop, what the country needs today are strict laws and their enforcement for the observance of highest standards of hygiene and cleanliness in the commercial sale of food items of any variety or hues. The policy-makers behind such innovative administrative announcements need to look at the way for years some well-established MNCs have been strictly following for sale of items such as ice-cream and kulfis, and back home to some acceptable standard by our poorest minds selling "kulchas" and "channas" on roadside adequately covered in bronze utensils.

Advertisement

If even in the face of such terribly unhygienic conditions we Indians have been saved from the impact of epidemics, it is only our age-old habit of roasting or cooking every item at highest temperatures possible backed by our levels of immunity, having been brought up in tough and challenging environmental states like animals are exposed to in jungles.

Last updated: January 02, 2018 | 18:05
IN THIS STORY
Please log in
I agree with DailyO's privacy policy