Afghanistan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani inaugurated on October 11th Afghanistan’s first modern slaughterhouse in Kabul. The slaughterhouse, totaling around $6 million, is financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Afghanistan Infrastructure Trust Fund (AITF), administered by ADB.
The slaughterhouse will increase the production of quality meat in Afghanistan to meet domestic demand, substitute imports, and create employment opportunities.
The slaughter of livestock in Afghanistan is mostly unregulated and often unhygienic, conducted in inadequate facilities or at the marketplace where the meat is sold to customers. The risk to public health has meant that Afghanistan has had to import quality meat from neighboring countries, even as livestock numbers have risen after a long period of war and severe drought. Afghanistan’s livestock is now worth an estimated $3 billion, and its meat industry generates sales of up to $800 million a year.
ADB’s Agriculture Market Infrastructure Project, financed by ADB through a $30 million grant and $11 million in co-financing from the Government of the United Kingdom through AITF, also supports the construction of two modern slaughterhouses in Kabul province and three in Kunduz, Balkh, and Herat provinces.
The project is part of Afghanistan’s agriculture sector master plan to establish hygienic slaughter facilities to reduce waste, mitigate public health risks, and improve the hygienic quality of the meat.
Original source: ADB
Published on 11 October 2018
