Dominica’s Chief Environmental Health Officer, Anthony Scotland has urged butchers on the island to intensify their sanitation and hygiene standards to ensure that meat made available for public consumption is safe.
He made the call in light of the current Christmas season when a significant amount of fresh meat is expected to be sold on the local market.
Scotland said workshops on meat sanitation and hygienic principles were recently conducted in Roseau, Portsmouth and Marigot to equip local butchers with new butchering skills.
The Chief Environmental Health Officer said these workshops were well received.
“These butchers were informed on meat sanitation and meat hygiene principles. This included how to slaughter, how to store the meat, how to present the meat and how they should present themselves when selling meat.” he said.
Scotland is of the opinion that by providing a modern slaughter house to butchers along with corresponding advocacy for cleanliness would amount to an increase in the public’s confidence about the quality of meat being consumed.
He added that “The butchers who were recently trained have knowledge of some of the basic principles but we have limitations in Dominica in that we do not have an organized abattoir for the slaughtering of animals. We are hoping that this will be solved soon with the proposed construction of an abattoir in Layou Park. This is the kind of facility that we would require to get environmental health to the next level.”
The island’s Chief Environmental Health Officer has asked that butchers exercise a high level of cleanliness in the preparation of slaughtered animals for sale to the public, to avoid any health hazards to the consuming public.