On December 4th, 2010, the Commissioner of Anantapur Municipal Corporation organized a meeting at our cattle hospital.
Anti-Plastic Bag Campaign for Cows
Recently, Karuna Society received 36 street roaming cows from Anantapur the largest town in the district. Karuna immediately provided these cows with medical treatment, fodder and shelter. One of these cows died suddenly and the postmortem showed it was caused by plastic ingestion of 40kg. The Karuna Board members held a series of discussions with the Commissioner resulting in this important meeting.
Emergency surgery was performed in presence of the cattle owners to show how much their cattle suffer when they let them walk free in the streets to feed on garbage in town instead of natural feed. Two cows were operated on. One cow had 42 kgs of plastic removed while the other had 32 kgs taken from its stomach. Each operation took approximately 2 hours. Unfortunately, the first cow died two days later despite the best efforts of the Karuna staff. It already had been in a weakened state for too long before the surgery.
The first cow that was operated on who unfortunately died
Second operated cow that is doing really well
On the day of the event, the Municipal Environmental Engineer, the Sanitary Inspector, the President of the Puttaparthi Gram Panchayath as well as regional cattle owners were invited to witness two such operations. The media was also invited to film and report this news to raise public awareness. Reporters from seven media channels and all district newspapers attended.
Plastic bags being removed from stomach
Incision being made at cow's stomach
After the event, the Commissioner showed the footage of the operations to all district officers. A decision was then made that from March 1st, 2011, plastic will be banned all over Anantapur District. In addition, they decided that Karuna’s cattle hospital would be the best place to operate on cows that are suffering from plastic ingestion as the necessary facilities and inpatient care is available.
In all big and small cities in India, cows are often let loose on the streets to scavenge in garbage and to save the cost of natural feed and grass. There are an enormous number of plastic bags in the street garbage. Many contain leftover food that attracts the cows to eat them. These polythene bags are stuck in the cow’s first stomach (Rumen). These plastics cannot be digested but accumulate over time resulting in a slow death as the cows are not able to ruminate with proper grass and feed. There is no space left in the rumen to start natural digestion. They only survive on the waste food; they slowly starve to death. In addition, the poor animals are in constant pain. Calves born from affected cows are small in size due to lack of food and space caused by packed rumen plastics. As much as 65 kgs of plastic has been removed from one cow’s stomach during a life-saving operation performed at Karuna’s cattle hospital.
Surgeons operating on cow
Stitching up of incision
Unfortunately, the owners of the street cattle roaming the streets are not real farmers. This is a most abusive business for the animals. Many are bought from farmers at the cattle market for very little money. The new “owner” simply leaves them on the road to fend for themselves. They mark the animals as their property. Whenever it suits them and the animal “looks fat”, they sell them off for a lot of money to an unsuspected real farmer or for slaughter. When the farmer feeds natural feed and grass, the animal dies from indigestion and the farmer and the cow are both victim of a cruel and immoral practice.
If we think only about Anantapur town there are still hundreds or more cattle left on the roads. They are sentenced to a slow cruel death. This is a cruelty most people are not aware off, when they see the animals walking in the street. Think about the big cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, how many animals are suffering.
To this date, seven rumenotomies have been performed. For three animals the surgery was too late to save their life. Four are doing well and are under observation. For some time we will continue the surgeries every Saturday.
The cost for each operation will be Rs. 5000/- approximately $100 per cow.
Please consider helping us to fund this much-needed service to help these cows that are suffering greatly and which will die without your help.