Carcasses are the products of slaughter house. Other offals are by-products or wastes. Generally, the terms by-products and offal are used to denote every part which is not included in a dressed carcass. By-products can be divided into two groups namely, edible and inedible. Organs such as kidneys, brain, liver, heart, gullet are examples of edible by-products. Hooves, horns, hair, bristles, gall blader, ears, skin etc. are among the inedible by-products. By-products can form a part of edible meat or can be converted to produce items for various commercial usages. The components left unrecovered simply form solid wastes. It has been observed that waste generation is largely influenced by the facility for recovery of by-products. It also depends on customs of consumer community. As such, quantity of wastes varies from place to place.

Annimals arriving at slaughter house

Ruminal, stomach and intestinal contents essentially form solid waste. Besides this, stomach and large intestine are also disposed of as waste in most of the slaughter houses. Soft meat pats such as lungs and pancreas are collected in large slaughter houses for sale to poultry feed processing units, whereas these offals are disposed as waste in medium and small slaughter houses. Horns and hooves are generally collected for sale.

Dressing of carcass in progress

Based on the data collected during the survey, the solid waste quantity generated in the bovine, goat and sheep and pig slughter houses is shown Table 3. Average solid waste generation from bovine slaughter houses is 275 kg/tonne of live weight killed (TLWK) which is equivalent to 27.5 per cent of the animal weight. In case of goat and sheep slaughter house, average waste generation amounts to be 170 kg per TLWK which is 17 per cent of animal weight. Solid waste generation from pig slaughtering is 2.3 kg/head equivalent to 4 per cent of animal weight.

It is observed that there is no organised system for disposal of solid wastes in most of the slaughter houses. The entire solid waste is collected and disposed of as land fill. In few slaughter house, dung and rumen digesta are collected separately for composting.

Table 3: Solid waste generation

Slaughter house waste contains mostly biodegradable matter. Characteristics of solid wastes form goat and sheep slaughtering are given in Table 4.

Table 4: Characteristics of slaughter house waste