BLOOD AND GUTS: Informal slaughterhouses a growing health problem in Baghdad

By Sarah al-Qahir in Baghdad

Baghdad local Hassan Ali says he can’t stand it any longer. “I can no longer breathe in my own home,” he says. “I had to buy medical masks to go outside. I’m seriously considering selling my house and moving elsewhere.”

Ali is talking about the way in which informal butchers operate in the city. As animals are slaughtered on the streets, there are foul odors, the waste is disposed of carelessly and swarms of insects are attracted.

Another local, Kareem Jabr, says his family’s health has been badly affected. They have skin diseases and infections caused by insects that swarm around the live animals and the offal.

“I feel hopeless and frustrated,” he says. “My health and my family’s health have deteriorated because the authorities’ neglect of this issue. No one cares about us or our problems.”

The issue is actually a common one on several well-known streets in Baghdad, including Al Bayaa Street, Baghdad Al Jadida, Al Kamaliya, Al Rashidiya and Al Shaab, among others. Numerous complaints to health and municipal authorities have had no results.

It is true that informal slaughterhouses are widespread in the city, confirms Majed al-Kaabi, director of the office that is supposed to supervise slaughterhouses at the city’s Ministry of Agriculture. One reason is that there are not enough modern slaughterhouses, he says. The last slaughterhouse was built in the 1980s and there are only 52 in the city altogether which, given the population of 9 million, is not really enough.

“Monitoring this issue falls under the duties of the Baghdad city council,” he added, “while our job is limited to oversight.”

Ali has submitted several complaints to the Baghdad city council but hasn’t seen any results. Municipal teams occasionally visit the area and they attempt to stop the butchers. “But these measures last only a day or two, and then the butchers return to their activities,” Ali explains. “The city’s actions are limited to getting a promise from butchers not to do it again.”

The informal slaughterhouses also contribute to the spread of certain types of haemorrhagic fever in Iraq. The diseases, which spread through contact with blood or the tissue of the animals, kill dozens of Iraqis every year, experts say.

Thaer al-Asadi, a doctor and the director of the epidemiology in the Ministry of Agriculture’s veterinary department, says the first cases of haemorrhagic fever were recorded in Iraq in 1979. The annual number of cases previously ranged from five to 10 but there has been a significant increase in recent years, with around 380 recorded in 2022 and 587 in 2023.

Besides spreading disease, local veterinarian Basal Kamel says that the informal slaughterhouses are also a major cause of environmental pollution as waste and animal remains are often dumped in local rivers, contaminating both the water and surrounding soil.

Environmental activist Nagy Rahim al-Rikabi complains that the local Ministry of the Environment and other relevant authorities have completely failed to address the problem.

The director of the veterinary department at Baghdad’s Ministry of Agriculture, Thamer al-Khafaji, disagrees. He says that his ministry has frequently requested that more slaughterhouses be built but that their construction would be the responsibility of the Ministry of Housing and Construction.

Meanwhile the Baghdad city council itself concedes that it has struggled to deal with the problems presented by informal and unlicensed slaughterhouses.

“We have not yet been able to resolve this issue in central Baghdad,” says Mohammed al-Rubai, a spokesperson for the city council. Monitoring has helped somewhat and some of the butchers have been removed. But more campaigns and monitoring are needed, al-Rubai said.

Unfortunately for locals like Ali and Jabr, and their families, this means they simply have to wait and suffer — because any sort of comprehensive solution remains distant.