As Atul Yadav sets up his food cart in the sweltering morning heat, flies are not the only guests feasting on garbage dumped on the side of a road in Noida’s Barola village.
Cows lumber through the dirt, trying to bite through polythene covers hoping to munch on rotten vegetables or kitchen refuse.
In the process, many ingest the entire package — plastic bags, rotten food and garbage. Veterinarians say that over time, there is a huge build-up of plastic in their stomachs, along with other indigestible inorganic materials. The result? A drastic reduction in their milk production ability and, in many cases, death.
While self-styled cow protection groups, calling themselves “Gau rakshaks,” have indulged in vigilantism under the garb of protection of cattle, there has been little effort to save the animals from a real threat — urban garbage, open dumps and apathy of cow owners.
“After a post-mortem I did on a cow that we had admitted, we found almost 100 kg of plastic in its system. People, disposing of garbage, put vegetable peels, dirt, etc in a plastic cover and then throw it out,” said Vineet Arora, the treatment head at the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in Noida, a suburb of New Delhi.
Most of the cows are owned by dairy farmers who let their animals loose in the city streets to look for free food instead of feeding them.
“The ones who ingest plastic are not able to eat proper food after that. The plastic in a cow’s system affects the milk,” SPCA official Arora said.
A ban on plastic items and restricted use by people, has found backing among animal protectionists and the gaushala caretakers.
Published - May 07, 2017 09:59 pm IST
