Veterinarians need to earn respect by rediscovering original mission: Maneka Gandhi
Once a week I get an application from people who want to join my hospital/shelter as a veterinary doctor. They come without experience and completely raw, unable to diagnose anything. After several months of training, one fine day, the vet will simply vanish — usually it’s the day after he gets his salary. Or he will say his mother is sick and take leave for a few days, never to return. Investigations reveal he has been chosen for a government job.
What do they do in the government? Do they heal animals? Do they go into the villages and teach villagers how to look after their animals? No. The ones that are unlucky enough to be posted to mofussil district clinics, while away their time playing cards or sitting in the winter sun. Those that are posted to city desk jobs become clerks and go into becoming teachers in government veterinary colleges. They have to look after the stray animals on the road and those that are taken to kanji houses. Not one of them does that and the kanji houses are simply a place where confiscated cattle are sold to butchers at night. Those that go to government laboratories to look after the “animal houses” – the animals that are used for experimentation – hardly ever go to work since their only job is to supply the poor animal to the experimenter. No one asks them how many die and whether they die of experimentation or starvation. The most prized posting that all government vets want is to slaughterhouses. Under the law every slaughterhouse has to have one vet for 96 animals. In reality, the slaughterhouses including the government ones in the capital, kill thousands of animals illegally. No vet can check the health of hundreds of animals with a cursory look. They have worms, broken limbs, tuberculosis, brucellosis, leukosis, sores, many are pregnant, most of them are underaged, and most of them are deeply wounded from being overloaded onto trucks and have gangrenous limbs. Many cannot walk and are dragged by the tails to the place of slaughter; breaking the rules that no sick animals can be killed. No vet checks any of this– most of them stay at home and receive a weekly packet from the butchers to stay away. In the history of slaughterhouses in India, not a single vet has rejected an animal for slaughter.
nother lucrative way is to certify private meat export companies without checking the meat. Many meat companies have been raided. What has been found is hundreds of pre-signed forms for years ahead in which the government vet has written that he has checked the meat and it is the meat of a buffalo, healthy, fresh and conforming to the rules. The meat has been found to be of cows and bulls. The vet gets paid per form without even being in the same city. A meat export company in Kanpur has its head office in Delhi – a small locked room that is the official “registered office”. Why do they keep it? They keep it so that the Delhi vet can sign for the Kanpur consignments.
The Supreme Court ordered an inspection of all slaughterhouses. By law, abattoir vets have to be on site to check that animals arriving and being unloaded are in a fit state to be slaughtered. They are also required check how animals are handled before slaughter. The other part of their job is leading a team of meat inspectors who monitor cleanliness and the processing of carcasses to control risks to health and hygiene. The inspections showed no vets on the premises and every kind of barbaric, terrible form of killing was common. Their excuse is they are threatened with knives by dangerous and volatile slaughterers if they object to anything. After a few days vets become immune to being surrounded by death, noise, shit and concrete, blood and screams.
Does this only happen in India? No. Across the world, the nature of the vet has changed. Very few are interested in animal welfare or health. Most now see animals as a route to a lot of money. A growing number opt to work in factory farms, poultries, and piggeries. They work in dimly lit, smelly, overcrowded sheds to prop up the factory farming system. Their aim is to keep animals alive long enough to be slaughtered profitably or to ensure they keep churning out enough milk or eggs to be commercially viable. Read More…