Punjab Food Minister Bilal Yasin launched a special ‘Meat Safety Task Force’ in the Punjab Food Authority (PFA), here on Thursday.
The force would consist of meat specialist doctors to ensure detailed inspection of meat, being supplied across province. While talking to the media, he said meat safety teams would conduct detailed inspections of slaughter houses, frozen meat units, meat shops, and meat processing units on daily basis. The force will also check the meat supplied at the entry points and meat markets of all districts including Lahore.
A complete record of traceability of meat coming from poultry farms, slaughterhouses will also be compiled and strict checking of entry points will be ensured in the morning hours.
The Food Minister said that Punjab Food Authority discarded 60 thousand kg of substandard meat during checking of meat shops and entry points in a few days. He said that elements hostile to health will never be allowed to do business and continuous checking is going on to ensure quality milk, meat and food.
“A historic reduction of 800 rupees in the price of a 20 kg bag of flour is ensured and the common man is getting all the fruits of our efforts”, he added. He said that steps are being taken to reduce the price of chicken, however, chicken is available in Lahore at Rs 100 less than Peshawar, but the price will be brought down further. Government is planning to ban the export of chicks so that the prices of chicken come down within the country.
Answering a question, the Minister of Food said that due to weather changes, the process of harvesting wheat has not started properly. Due to the high moisture content of wheat, it cannot be procured immediately.
In a few days, wheat will be procured when the moisture content reaches 10% as per the wheat procurement policy. Out of nearly 4 lakh applications have been received on the Bardana app, around 121,000 applications have been approved by the Punjab Land Records Authority after verification and these farmers will be given Bardana.
In response to another question, Minister Food said that the government has taken many measures to provide relief to the people during these first 40 days of our tenure. The caretaker federal government imported wheat which was a damaging decision and it should be investigated. Bilal Yasin said that our government stands with the farmer community.
Bilal Yasin said that the farmer cannot be left alone and they will get their hard earned money. Our government is also bringing an historical 130 billion rupees’ relief package for farmers, he concluded.
