During the festive season, when meat sale is at its peak, unregistered slaughterhouses in Kathmandu have been found selling unhygienic buffalo meat, putting people’s health in jeopardy.

With officials focused on inspecting the mutton market, buffalo meat consumers have been left at their own mercy. Statistics show that at least 62 percent of buffalo meat consumers are affected by some kind of communicable disease caused by unhygienic meat.

Officials from the District Livestock Services Office, Nepal Food Corporation and Nepal Agricultural Research Council, as part of their monitoring, have been inspecting he-goats, mountain goats and sheep. They expect to examine some 40,000 goats during the festival in order to sort healthy animals from sick ones.

They have concentrated their efforts on surveying the health condition of livestock in Bagbazar-Tukucha and Kalanki, Balaju Bypass, Koteshwor-Tinkune and Baneshwor-Bijulibazaar areas. According to Madhav Aryal, an official at the Directorate of Livestock Market Promotion, over 400 goat horns were marked red on Monday to indicate their unhealthy status.

Despite slaughterhouses catering meat worth around Rs 13 billion annually to almost 60 different marketplaces in the Valley, a majority of them are out of food inspectors’ sight. The Slaughterhouse and Meat Inspection Act requires livestock to have ante-mortem examination.

“Most slaughterhouses defy the law and are not registered,” said Narendra Bajracharya, chief of public health department at the Kathmandu Metropolitan City.

“Some slaughterhouses even send meat of dead buffaloes to the market,” a butcher at Inaytole said a few weeks ago. Meat obtained from around three to five dead buffalos reaches market every day, he said.

Bal Krishna Khadgi, chairman of the Slaughterhouse Promotion Committee, denies the allegation. “We only send healthy meat for sale,” he said.

According to the KMC, around 800 buffalos are slaughtered in Kathmandu Valley each day. “People risk serious infections due to unhealthy meat consumption,” said Dr Anjir Man Singh of the Animal Health and Livestock Services office. “Food poisoning, typhoid, dysentery and diarrhoea are caused by unhygienic meat.”