Yesterday the Ministry Of Environment made a surprise inspection of the chicken slaughterhouse with the wastewater problem. The slaughterhouse has a long history of bad relations with the Ministry, since it was discharging wastewaters with excessive protein and animal fat content, high BOD and COD concentration, and it had no separate systems for the organic flow, the saltwater flow and the sanitary sewage flow. Israel is now in water scarcity panic and the salinization of the aquifers has become a critical priority, so this factory is apperntly going to have to serve as sacrificial goat. Apparently, the results of the surprise inspections were unfavourable (there is no report written yet) and the management is in total panic.
The main problem was the excessive salt content of the water, which makes some contribution to the general deterioration of Israeli aquifer quality. When I took over the case four months ago, I submitted a plan to the Ministry, which was approved, and then it was implemented more or less as I planned. I installed an electric conductivitimeter (which indicates the salt content of the wastewater discharge to the public system) to register the salt content of the wastewater and it appeared to produce more or less acceptable results. Then, about two weeks ago, the Ministry visited the factory and discovered that the electrode had been moved to the bottom of the tank, where the water was not flowing, so that measurements were not representative. Worse, they discovered that the electricity supply had been disconnected and the emergency batteries were practically dead. I was shocked by the report, because it meant to me that the Management itself was sabotaging my honest efforts. I said that by now I had done my best and maybe a "heavier" expert could keep fighting the case.
They Dr. P., an Ph. D. in industrial wastewater with relations in the Court and the high levels of the Ministry. During the first meeting at the lawyer's office, he proposed to attack the validity of the conductivity measurement methodology, since the regulations related to actual dissolved Cl Na and not indirect measurements of the conductivity. I said that it was a standard technique used for ages by the Ministry of Environment, and I was not going now to mess with the Ministry's own experts and professors. Under the doctor's leadership they continued to maintain me on the team in auxiliary tasks, behind the curtains as I wished.
The Ministry heard the expert witness testimony of Dr. P. and read his technical reports, but the process continued progressing against the slaughterhouse. Yesterday, as said, they made a surprise inspection en masse, and as consequence, the management is now most nervous and depressed. They fear that the Judge will sign the closure order, or that the Police will arrive any moment to enforce a signed order. Worse, they fear the issue will reach the papers, causing an irreparable damage to their image. The consumers of their products are unable to distinguish between a purely regulatory - enviromental issue like dumping excess salt in the sewage, and a hygienic or health problem of the chickens marketed by the company.
Apparently, they are going to be closed for a while, and they will have to pay a heavy penalty. The fact that now the factory is now 100% equipped and works according to the rules does not help them, because they succeeded in making the Ministry people to hate them for cheating all these years. May be I am wrong, and the Ministry will see that NOW everything is OK and will let them go on operating. I am not optimist, because a well-publicised slaughterhouse closing-down operation would be in the Ministry's best public relations interests. This case may have no happy end.
6 comments:
In the US a major Kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa was raided recently, not for pollution but for employing large #'s of illegal aliens. Now that they have opened Pandora's box, they have discovered all sorts of abuses -underage workers, sexual abuse by supervisors, etc. It's a very bad idea to get on the bad side of government. What I have found in my dealings with the Orthodox is that while they (at least try to appear to) strictly uphold halachic law, they have absolutely no respect for civil laws so that the fact that they may have tampered with you sensors, etc. does not shock me in the least. It is of course more important for you to uphold your own credibility with the government employees you will have to deal with in the future - do not expose yourself for the sake of the owners of the slaughterhouse - they would not do the same for you.
the slaughterhouse in case is kosher but all of them are kosher in Israel. There is no assurance that the sensor was not working because negligence or tampering. The rule is never accuse someone of evil intentions when stupidity will do. The slaughterhouse´s problem is that they have been cought in the environmental grinding machine in a very bad time, when there is a water scarcity panic developing, and a general searching for culprits. The Orlev Commission already has declared that the water scarcity is not a natural phenomenon but manmade.
I know this is an ignorant question, but why were they using salt to process fresh chickens?
An older butcher at my store told me that when he started 20 years ago the store would receive bins full of skinned chickens and they would be cut down on-site into legs, thighs, breasts and other parts. Now all of our chicken comes precut in a saline solution, but it isn't necessary to do it that way.
The salt is necessary make the chickens ritually correct according to the Jewish religion, that is, kosher. The Jewish religion forbids eating the blood, so the meat cannot have blood in it. Jewish consumers examine carefully the meat they buy and if there is the smallest sign of blood, they reject it. The blood is traditionally drawn out by salting. In Israel most chickens have to be ¨kosher¨and there are special religious supervisors to ensure that the procedure is followed correctly and the food is ¨kosher¨. There are non-kosher chickens that are produced for the non-Jewish population, they do not require salting so the non-kosher slaughterhouses have none of these environmental difficulties.
I always wondered what the koshering salt was for at my grocery store, thanks.
If the purpose of salting is to remove the blood, then couldn't alternative methods of blood removal be devised? The cut chicken parts could be placed on a grate in a vacuum causing the blood to run out from internal pressure.
Mr Ronduck,
You are right. Blood could be removed by modern environmentally-friendly ways instead of massive use of salt. I shall write a letter to the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, to propose alternative methods.
Basically the salting method was perfectly good while the wastewater was not recycled but dumped in the sea or a big river. The problem started in Israel about ten years ago, when we started to treat and recycle wastewater as irrigation water. Most crops are very sensitive to salt and cannot be irrigated with brackish water. That is why the dumping of salt into the sewage must be stopped. As far as I know, the Rabbinate and the ritual supervisors are totally unaware of the salt problem, and there was never a need to rethink ancient religious rituals. Anyway, to change something in religion, in any religion, is very difficult.
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