Cattle slaughter ban

Within days of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa announcing his proposal to ban cattle slaughter but permit beef imports at a meeting of the government parliamentary group, where it touched a responsive chord among most MPs, the government got into reverse mode with spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella telling the post-cabinet news briefing that this matter had been laid by for a month. The government had obviously realized the error of rushed decision making, or had been nudged in that direction perhaps by the president, and decided not to hastily blunder into controversial areas without adequate study. Muslims, a beef eating community that also control beef and mutton stalls countrywide as well as most slaughter houses, would obviously be unhappy about any decision to ban the slaughter of cattle – something they have resisted over the years. They comprise a fair slice of our population and the new government will not wish to antagonize an entire community this early in its tenure. Surprisingly there was no angry outcry against the proposal no sooner it was publicized.

Nevertheless the first shot has been fired across the bows. We publish today a reader’s letter signed by a Muslim asking why only cattle? Saying, maybe tongue in cheek, that he welcomes the slaughter ban proposal, he asks why not also ban the slaughter of goats, pigs, deer, rabbits and what have you. He adds that to be fair on the quadrupeds, why not include the bipeds like fowl, duck, turkey and doves (we have not heard of doves being hunted for meat although snipe and teal-shooting was a popular sport many years ago). He also asks, sarcastically or otherwise we do not know, whether beef imports will not mean encouraging slaughter of cattle elsewhere to feed us. However that be, he has made a point.

A great many of the Buddhists among us do not eat beef. But they do relish mutton, pork, chicken and bush meat whenever available. This can be explained by the fact that although there is no ‘Sacred Cow’ concept here as in India, a lot of Lankans believe that it is sinful to slaughter and eat the flesh of an animal providing us with milk and playing a useful role as a draught animal to plough our fields and haul our loads. Of course bullock carts, hackeries, thirikkales and similar modes of transport are now receding into memory. However we do see the occasional bullock-drawn kerosene cart in Colombo and some of the other bigger cities. During the earlier and middle part of the last century, there were lot of these carts, owned by the father of the famed surgeon, Dr. P.R. Anthonis who had a large business distributing kerosene oil imported by multinational companies like Shell, Caltex and Standard Vacuum Oil Company until the Sirima Bandaranaike government nationalized the business of importing and distributing petroleum products.

Although it is illegal to slaughter buffaloes, who once served a very useful purpose tilling our rice fields, but have now been almost totally replaced by tractors, an illicit trade in buffalo meat has long existed. In addition to their value as a draught animal, buffalo milk which has a higher fat content than cow milk, is preferred for the making of curd with meekiri long enjoying a top ranking in the market. While on the subject of buffaloes, an anecdote related in parliament by the late Mr. Bernard Soysa during the debate on the Paddy Lands Act is worth retelling. The well-loved LSSP MP said that he and his comrades had toured the rice-gowing areas of the country to win over peasant support for the legislation. At Tissamaharama they told a group of farmers that they can till their fields in the future with tractors rather than buffaloes when an old farmer had piped, “but tractors won’t pataw danawa (calve) like buffaloes!”

Cattle thieving, inevitably for supplying illicit slaughter houses and butchers, has been rampant in the country for a very long period of time and continues either unabated or very poorly controlled to this day. A ban on the slaughter of these animals, will deliver a death blow to that menace and this will be widely welcomed in a country where many Buddhists seek merit by saving the lives of cattle bound for the abattoir. People doing such good deeds are often confronted with the problem of finding a safe haven for these animals to live out their natural life spans. The scarcity of such opportunities are known to sometimes result in the tragedy of once saved animals eventually ending under the butcher’s knife.

There are already meat and fish imports into the country to meet high-end demand in the big hotels where imported steaks and salmon are on offer, of course at a price that only the very rich can afford. In fact the domestic food processing industry imports mutton – we wrongly call goat meat mutton whereas mutton is the meat of a sheep or lamb – some of which is converted into corned mutton for export. In fact some non-beef eating Lankans domiciled abroad take back cans of corned mutton from here as corned beef is much more available where they live. Be that as it may, a ban on cattle slaughter will have ramifications that go well beyond the hostility of beef eaters who are not only Muslims. In the Eastern Province, for example, a tough and wiry peasantry has been created on beef and milk. Also, logical progression of a ban on cattle slaughter should eventually develop into a demand to end the fishing industry.

President Premadasa, in his tenure, halted government support for the inland fishing industry and some hatcheries producing fingerlings to stock irrigation reservoirs and tanks were closed. But inland fisheries have prevailed with perhaps some of those hatcheries resurrected. It is unlikely, if not impossible, for any country in the modern world to stop the consumption of animal protein. Even if the ban on cattle slaughter is not eventually imposed, we must ensure humane slaughter as a top priority. That is a must.