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Croix-des-Bosales

The Slaughterhouses of Croix-des-Bosales

The Slaughterhouses of Croix-des-Bosales

Picture of a slaughterhouses in the metropolitan area of Port-auprince characterized by foul odors, scattering rubbish and pests of all kinds. These places for slaughter of "meat animals" operate outside of hygiene or safety standards.

La Saline slaughterhouse in Port-au-Prince is there since 1982. It is a blood-drenched patch of land near a site which was once used for trading slaves. Today, it is an open air abattoir that supplies meat to the city. Seeing animals being killed is one thing, but hearing the sound of animals about to be killed is quite different. If you haven't heard that before, it's quite cruel and pathetic. It happens every morning well before the dawn when people from different departments of the country come to slaughter their livestock, including goats, cattle, and pigs. For the local people who live here in the impoverished shanty houses, slaughtering animals is the only means to earn their daily breads. Every day, about 150 goats and 100 pigs are killed and the merchants pay a fee of 10 to 15 gourdes per animal to the slaughterhouse administration and the slaughterers, in turn, are rewarded with pieces of meat. The open killing ground smells of dead animals, smoke and burning trash. The stench produced from burning animal skins is very distinctive. Anyone buying animal elsewhere can get it killed here for 125 gourdes. He can pay a man less than a dollar to push the carcass in a wheel barrow to the other side of the market where the animal could be sold by weight. There is no proper infrastructure and the state authority, knowing the fact that this is one of the main sources of meat to the city, prefers to keep their eyes closed.

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