Tuesday, August 4, 2015

The other end of the value chain : from the slaughtering to pig joints

On my recent trip to Uganda we not only looked at pig producers but also tired to understand the value chain as a whole. So we decided to visit a pork joint, a pig eatery and figure out where that pig comes from.

Choose your piece of pig you would like to eat
The pork just hangs there, and people can come to choose the piece of meat one wants and it gets roasted for you. You can also buy pork fresh and roast it at home.

Then it is roasted for you
The roasted meat comes with tomato, onion, and boiled cassava. 

Because keeping meat needs a fridge, the simplest way to manage demand fluctuation is to keep animal live and slaughter them when needed. Therefore there is a stable with animal ready to slaughter.
The best conservation of meat : alive animal waiting for being slaughtered
Farmers usually call the owner of the joint and offer to sell their animal. Then farmers bring their animals on the agreed day. Farmers get paid an agreed spot price for the amount of fresh meat which is weighted after slaughtering. When animals did not get enough proteins in their feed, then the animal looks big but has a lot of fat, for which the farmer does not get paid for. That's why farmers often feel cheated.
My colleague Simon interviewing the owner of the pork joint
We then went to see the "slaughter place", i was expecting to see some place with some hygiene, but found only a piece of land which burnt earth and a pot of hot water. No table, no hygiene.
the "slaughter place"
The place is located near to a river where the water is taken from to boil. Hot water is needed to take the hair away from the pork. Hair are burnt on the spot. Intestines are given away for free, or are buried. All other part of the pork, head, feet is eaten.

boiling water from the river to take hear of the pork

It seems that there are about 40 places like this around Hoima. There are discussion to build a real slaughter house together with those joint owners.


No comments:

Post a Comment