Meet the Meat Mafia

Srinagar, Aug 18: What does Kashmir eat?

According to insiders, it is a cocktail of chlorine, ammonium hydroxide, and a pinch of deceit dressed up as butter chicken or mutton kebab.

The meat mafia has perfected a recipe where even rotten flesh can be served fresh.

An insider from the meat trade has shed light on the sprawling “meat mafia” operating out of Jammu and Kashmir, and connecting to Delhi.

The mafia sources substandard and stale meat from Ghazipur Mandi and funnels it into J&K, contributing to the recent wave of seizures by authorities and dumping by stockists.

Speaking to Greater Kashmir, the insider said that the supply chain begins at Ghazipur Mandi, where mutton, chicken, and beef rejected by restaurants and hotels for failing FSSAI standards is collected.

It is classified as B-grade meat, from diseased animals, or with existing contamination.

In addition, meat scraps, the entrails, trims, and suet are also collected in the mandi from many other meat processing units.

“In tier-1 cities, meat is strictly monitored, but this oversight diminishes in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, like Srinagar. J&K, with its massive demand for meat and meat products and not so robust mechanism to check the quality of meat, is a booming market the mafia is always on a lookout for,” he said.

The focus is on making huge profits with products that are not even fit for the consumption of animals. “Discarded meat and animals are sold cheaply at the mandi. Many animals are slaughtered on-site, including chicken and sheep, their meat stored in ice-boxes, not frozen,” he said.

Meats are delicate when it comes to shelf life; they lose freshness and nutritional value at temperatures that are above minus 18 degrees centigrade, and microbial growth takes place beyond deep-freeze conditions.

At the mandi, ice-boxes containing already compromised meats are treated with chlorine,  ammonium hydroxide, and nitrate acids to create a “show”.

“These chemicals eliminate odours and create a fresh, fluffy, and reddish appearance,” he said.

Then begins the journey: the meat, packed in ice-boxes, is transported in ordinary trucks without cold-chain facilities and distributed from “freezing factories.”

The meats remain in thawed condition during transit and are later frozen in various types of freezing facilities.

Some in large deep freezers, some in ice-cream factories, and some supplied directly to Food Business Operators (FBOs).

In a shocking revelation, the Insider said, the Meat Mafia employs black-mail tactics with many new FBOs.

“It starts with providing fresh meat on credit to new businesses initially. Later, they supply B-class products and demand payment under threat if complaints arise,” he said.

The sub-standard meat is inexpensive and plentiful. The FBOs are reliant on it, by choice or necessity, to keep the business profitable with changing situational and customer dynamics.

The Insider said during the on-going drive against substandard meats, the large stockpiles seem to have remained concealed and the smaller ones are discarded and intercepted.

“The operation’s scale is much more vast than one can comprehend,” he said.

Talking about the retail outlets of poultry in J&K, he said, chicken shops also sell sick or discarded birds. “There is a 50-50 term in the poultry sector. Sick and compromised birds are often half of the stock but are as much part of the supply as a healthy bird,” he said.

These sick birds are often pre-cut before the consumers arrive and decorated in show windows as breast-cut, leg pieces, and others,” he said.

In some cases, the whole sick birds are hidden in blood-draining buckets and substituted when customers select live birds for slaughter, stealthily.

The ongoing crackdown on meat started at the end of July in J&K, and in the past two weeks, hundreds of kilos of meat and meat products have been seized and found discarded.

Public outrage prompted the government to convene a meeting on Monday to discuss the way forward in order to ensure a safe supply to consumers.