Turkey | Ereğli/Konya | Cihangir Et Slaughterhouse
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Today our partner organization Eyes on Animals is in Ereğli. Cihangir Et has a small slaughterhouse which slaughters animals only 2 days in a week. They slaughter approximately 40 cattle and 300-600 sheep a day and they sell the meat in their own market in İstanbul.
We meet with the manager. It isn't slaughter day but all workers are there for cleaning. We inspect the plant and then we can find opportunity to talk with all workers. All of them are interested with our footage and information we share.
They have small unloading area without lateral bars. The floor isn't grated but it isn't looking slippery. The manager says they don't see animals slipping. Sheep's part in the lairage has solid seperating walls but cattle's don't. He says doing the same for cattle is in their plans. The lairage and the raceway have shades. A few meters before restraint box is "S" shaped with solid sidewalls. They have many lights inside and one of them is above the restraint box. The problem about raceway is the floor. Some missing stones, different surfaces and puddles can easily make cattle stop. Floor of the box is a few cm. higher than raceway's floor and it's another problem.
We recommend him to set sidewalls and antimounting bars on the raceway and he says they are not necessery because they don't have mounting problem. His respond is surprising. He says they let cattle go to restraint box from lairage one by one. There is a worker in lairage, he takes a cattle from lairage and walks behind the cattle untill restraint box. When cattle go inside, he goes back to lairage and take another one. This way cattle can't mountain each other and can't see and hear when others being slaughtered. It's benefit of being a low capacity slaughterhouse.
Unfortunately they have trip-floor restraint box and they cut the neck while the animal fully hoisted like many other Turkish slaughterhouses. We recommend them to let animals one shoulder on the floor, but he thinks the animal can injure the butcher. They don't let animal owners in the plant, so it must reduce crowdness.
We hope that footages and the information we shared will change their mind.
