Hygenic meat a must

The news item ‘Meat or poison: Tests warn of risks ahead’ (THT, August 18) was important as it drew the attention of meat consumers in Kathmandu. An inspection team headed by microbiologist, Dr Lochana Joshi, had collected three samples of raw meat — buffalo, mutton and chicken — from the local market. The tests conducted at the Food Quality Testing

Laboratory of the Public Health Department under the Metropolitan City found that all the three types of meat contained high micro-organisms called salmonella (56pc, 33pc and 65pc respectively) which are responsible for causing typhoid, paratyphoid and gastroenteritis.

Dr Joshi warned against consuming such types of meat without proper cooking. Moreover, the KMC’s Chief of Public Health Department, Dr Baburam Gautam, advised that contamination from pathogenic organisms should be minimised during slaughtering, dressing and subsequent handling at production houses. We have very few clean slaughter-houses, and for lack of hygiene, we are bound to get sick. Hence, the government must raise awareness and control the spreading of the diseases. I would also like to call on the departments concerned to take necessary steps in this regard. In Nepal, there is only one food industry, known as LSG Sky Chefs, which deals with airline catering. It produces food products on the basis of the HACCP system. It is the only industry which performs vendor’s

hygiene audit every year for those who supply potentially hazardous food products. Hope this will curb the sale of unhygenic meat products.

Binita Shrestha, Quality Assurance Manager, LSG Sky Chefs, Tilganga

Local refinery

The demand for petroleum products is rising in Nepal. The supply of petroleum products are met from imports, especially through the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC). None of the Nepal Oil

Corporation’s international procurement is undertaken for direct use in Nepal. NOC supplies to IOC the crude petroleum products as requested by IOC, and NOC gets the various products from IOC depots near the Nepal border. The price variations between the crude and finished products, the huge investment for its procurement, the time spent between storage and lifting

and the overhead costs are also linked to the cost of petroleum products delivered to NOC. To

reduce the extra burden, the government should construct a refinery within the country. In fact, private investors should be encouraged in this regard.

Sudarshan Chandra Khanal, Mulpani

Change

Though THT has improved a lot, it’s time to change. THT must include a separate section for new technological products which are being produced daily, and it should inform its readers about such products.

Angel Sharma, Sifal

Unfriendly

I just checked your website for the first time. It’s not very user-friendly. Hope you are working

on it. In the entertainment section, you don’t even have a single news article on Nepali movies

or actors. So you don’t have the feeling that you are reading a Nepali newspaper.

Kalpana, via e-mail