Even as the Chennai Corporation began to smell the stink emanating from substandard meat from Andhra Pradesh, suppliers have revealed that most of this ‘re-shipped’ meat was that which was rejected by star hotels. “They have very stringent standards,” explained Shawaz Nadeem, who supplied beef and veal from a farm in Ambur. “Though we slaughter and ship the meat quickly, they reject large quantities even if there is a little smell or discoloration,” he added.
In this case, they usually quickly look to offload the meat to smaller restaurants in the suburbs around the city. “The restaurants in Vellore usually don’t need this much volume, so we put it on ice and send it by truck to Chengalpet, Tindivanam and even Pondicherry. Ambur beef at half-price is easy to sell there,” he admitted. Another wholesale supplier, Imranullah*, reasoned that the meat wasn’t actually bad, but just below star-hotel standard. “We eat slightly stale and frozen meat all the time. If I can give it to my children, why can’t I sell it?” he asked.
Perhaps they meant no harm, but with the time taken for smaller retailers to buy and sell the meat, inevitably the portions near the bone start rotting. Invariably, the meat was frozen and resold by meat shops in poorer areas for a lower rate. “People believe that if it looks fairly clean and the meat is cooked well, it will be safe. This isn’t true at all.
It can cause all kinds of diseases, especially for children,” said a former food production professor.
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