City to build large-scale chicken slaughterhouse

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration is to build its first large-scale chicken slaughterhouse in a bid to fully control the quality of the meat distributed to the market, a city official said on Thursday.

Sri Mulyono, a senior official from the city livestock husbandry agency, said the new slaughterhouse was urgently needed. He said the agency had experienced difficulties in controlling the distribution of the chicken meat due to the scattered locations of the existing small chicken slaughterhouses.

"To develop the slaughterhouse, the city administration will receive loans worth US$100,000 (about Rp 700 million at the current rate) from the World Bank.

"The memorandum of understanding itself has already been signed, but we have not yet decided when the construction work will begin," Sri said.

Total construction costs for the slaughterhouse, to be built on a two-hectare plot in Penggilingan, East Jakarta, are estimated at about Rp 1 billion.

"The administration will finance 20 percent of the total cost," Sri said.

In addition to the main project, temporary shelters for suppliers would also be constructed at the site to accommodate suppliers who hail from areas outside Jakarta.

Currently, the city only has large-scale slaughterhouses for sheep, buffaloes and pigs.

Sri said the planned chicken slaughterhouse would have a production capacity of between 20,000 and 30,000 chickens per day.

He acknowledged, however, that the city needed a slaughterhouse with a larger output capacity in order to meet the capital's daily demand for an average 300,000 chickens.

"Later, if we still have adequate funds and land space, we'll build similar slaughterhouse in each of the four mayoralties. Central Jakarta will not be included on the list due to the lack of space in the area," Sri said.

Chicken meat distributed to the Jakarta markets is currently supplied from some 1,000 small slaughterhouses scattered in and around the capital.

"About 99 percent of the demand in the capital comes from other provinces, particularly the neighboring West Java area," he said.

Sri guaranteed that the supply of chicken meat for the upcoming Christmas, New Year and Idul Fitri festivities in Jakarta would be adequate.

"Weeks ago we had a meeting with poultry breeders who said that they experienced no problems in meeting the city's demand," he said. (ind)