Create Meat ATMs

Asalam-u-Alykum

We have huge problems in meat distribution. Many of our relatives and the poor in the larger community pool, we fail to cater. And if catered to, they fail to store it. If we store at all, we don’t store for community or the poor but for ourselves. We don’t store at proper temperature and in recommended packages. There is a simple solution. Create meat ATM in public places/shrines/mosques that have proper power supply.

It needs around thirty thousand only and its cost can be reimbursed from the collections of locality on the first day of Eid if only one Mohalla choose to contribute one third or a share of the poor to it. Aqiqa and meat donations throughout year can be other sources. We can allocate some kilos for poor brides on marriage, some for community guests/attendants visiting hospitals/taziyet of anyone in community or as mutually agreed upon by local leadership in consultation with the poor and the qualified scholars. We can process some for meat balls, kababs etc. for other uses of the poor or community functions. A few points call for elaboration.

Meat is the currency today and we waste so much by way of overeating, failure to store scientifically, throwing away feet and head and part of offals, not making available the share of the poor and community in proper way for extended period after qurbani. Almost all of us who do qurbani or receive qurbani meat waste part of it by failure to store it. An estimate shows that most don’t give the poor their one third portion or if they do the poor have poor capacity to store it. And in the process of grabbing whatever comes, some get protein overload and we find many cases of illness following Eid. Most of us forget that it is sacrifice and as such the others are to be put first and helping them in the most professional way.

Most people in cities and towns send to their relatives thighs or big portions of meat and receive in turn similar or even bigger while the poor are left out or asked to lift fly infested head and hooves. About the sheep it has been well said that nothing of it except the last cry goes waste but here certain offals, skin, head and feet and other things otherwise consumed go waste. And blood too isn‘t converted into blood meal. Pelts are not converted into different products but usually get wasted away.

We have at least three options to make best use of the share of poor and community in qurbani and aqiqa meat.

• Store in your own freezer for months in their name and make available to properly identified beneficiary at your own level or through local community heads.
• Send to local meat bank that scientifically stores meat, helps needy, besides research from community share.
• Get meat processed to increase its value and store to conserve space and make better donation to the poor in need.

Meat shouldn’t be wasted by storing in refrigerators as is the practice in most households or orphanages. It must be stored in freezers at -18 degree centigrade for extended preservation. Ideally it should be chilled at -80 degree centigrade. It is best stored wrapped in flour or after destroying enzymes by boiling for a brief period. Regular non erratic constant power supply must be ensured. It demands small but important interventions and proper equipment to ensure proper extended storage. Most households or institutions don’t take this trouble. That is why we need to revisit the whole idea of storing meat and distributing the meat amongst the rich or not so needy. We need to ensure distribution for poor or for community facilities. It doesn’t take more than 30,000, or so, to install requisite equipment besides assured regular non fluctuating power supply. The cost of this equipment can be met from the value of meat that gets accumulated in first few hours on Eid.

There is a great example of wasting nothing and using community freezer to store excess or spare food items in a village in India. I think we need to replicate this example and store not just meat but eatables as well and create zero waste society. In order to ensure proper preservation, please help local community purchase one spacious deep freezer and don’t eat away the recommended share of the poor. In every locality someone can volunteer to donate the freezer or do only one qurbani and divert resources for other animals to purchasing one freezer. It is sadaqa i jariyah. Kashmir has been a space for community feasts.

Some spiritual figures would host every Sunday or Thursday or some particular day of year and some every month. Why can’t we reinvent this and celebrate with simple modest feast with particular category of relatives and neighbours or friends on rotational basis without needing to worry about procurement of meat as the same is available from qurbani and aqiqa? Meat ATM will be a source of joy of feasting without worrying about arrangement for the same. Best students can be given meat scholarship as is in vogue in Saudi Arabia. Either send the excess meat to the poor areas, arrange their proper storage there or store in local ATM. The current situation resembles situation of mad rush for ATM on Eid as if year ahead doesn’t exist.

Meat linked entrepreneurship courses and range of disciplines including home sciences and hotel management can be started in most schools; also retirement or other parties hosted from Eid and aqiqa supplies or other neat donations professionally maintained. A simple intervention would create ATM of heads and hooves for special needs of people for months ahead of Eid.

In most areas people are unable to reach out to the poor and even some distant relatives. As such two shares fail to be properly distributed – that of the poor and of the community of neighbours and relatives. We need to recall that in the time of the Prophet (SAW) meat was stored from Eid to Eid despite no freezing facilities.

Such methods as sun drying were used. The rich get richer in terms of meat and the poor get stomach ache only after two days from badly stored meat. Hotter season makes quick storage all the more important. It is scientifically and, for taste, recommended not to cook meat immediately after animal has been slaughtered but wait for many hours for rigour mortis and other processes to settle and pass, and ideally cold treat meat or store fresh meat in fridge before cooking it. Here even many butchers don’t know it. All these points mean we need meat ATMs badly and they will make the poor smile till the next Eid and the cycle of joys would not cease.

So much time is spent on so many issues in Eid sermons but not a word about storing meat and the rights of the poor. Even if it is only recommended to spare at least one third for the poor and one third for the community of neighbours and relatives one can spare one’s own share as well and donate the whole animal for people and meat ATM. The idea of meat ATM exists in certain places including Srinagar, Ganderbal and Bandipore – dozens of cases for marriage assistance have been helped by way of 15 to 20kg free meat for marriage so far and one can donate and recommend a case for the poor bride to be married in June or afterwards – and needs to be scaled up only.