Slaughterhouses must improve to boost competitiveness of leather industry

Uganda has huge potential to produce high quality hides and skins. However, several factors hinder this, particularly, what happens at the different slaughter slabs across the country. 

Presently, up to 30 percent of hides and skins from slaughter slabs are unusable and account for 9.5 percent of lost value along the leather and leather goods value chain. 

This source of value leakage is second to the continuous export of semi processed hides and skins (or wet blue) which accounts for 10 percent of total loss of value. 

The low quality of Uganda’s hides and skins is ranked among the most problematic factors to the competitiveness of Uganda’s leather and leather goods industry. 

Setback 
To understand the problem, we need to consider how most slaughter centres in this country, go about the business of slaughtering the animals brought in.

A typically good slaughterhouse will have a surface/floor that is smooth and wide enough to protect the sued side of hides and skins, during slaughter. 

A number of centres actually have these. With the availability of such good infrastructure, one would expect hides and skins produced thereof to be of good quality. However, they are of low grade, because of the under listed factors.

Factors 
A focus on meat compromises the quality of hides and skins.
First and foremost, all the workers at the centres are, in principle, interested in meat—period. 

They are perhaps not aware of or sensitised of the high local and export value the country attaches to hides and skins. The low levels of awareness are exhibited in the poor slaughtering and flaying practices, as discussed below.

Stunning 
The stunning process is one that ensures that the animal is unconscious and is not sensitive to pain before being bled out at slaughter. However, the people who are in charge of stunning are the most senior members in the racket that disfigure hides. 

They demand a sizeable portion of meat around the navel area of the carcass, from the flayers, (to complement their pay) hence, they contribute to the disfiguring of the hide/skin. A massive piece of flesh is removed together with the hide, and to give room for this, flayers must make a C curve around the navel, giving the hide the characteristic non-overlapping shape.

Throat slitting
Throat slitters are the second most senior members of the racket. Their role is to open or cut the animal’s throat. They contribute to poor ripping practices by taking a long and fleshy part of the hide around the neck (commonly known as ‘ensikya’), further disfiguring the hide. 

A throat cutter at one of the slaughter centres when asked says that he deliberately cuts deep or low neck because, his main remuneration is the head of the animal. With an extended part of the neck (or deep cut into the neck), he can get an additional two to three kilogrammes of beef to sell. To avoid suspicion, the extended part of the neck, is sliced into small pieces of flesh, which are thrown to gumboot pickers, loitering at the slaughterhouse – these pay between Shs3,000 and Shs5,000 for a boot full of beef.

Flaying
Flayers remove the hide from the carcass. They work in pairs, and they are remunerated per animal they flay. This mode of payment inadvertently compromises the quality of hides and skins flayed. 

At Shs2,000 per animal this translates to Shs1,000 per flayer per animal. To earn more, the flayers (in their different pairs) are prompted to compete to flay more animals, in the process compromising the quality of hides removed with conspicuous deep cuts. Flayers further disfigure the hides, by removing huge chunks of the hide around the testicles or the vulva to sell the pieces as dog meat or to individuals who make meat samosas for sale. 

The tools used in flaying
Hand flaying using pointed rather than rounded tip knives is a common flaying technique. The pointed knives pierce holes in the hides and skins thereby dampening their value and quality. The acceptable flaying knife should have a round or curved tip to avoid accidental cuts on the hides, as shown in the images below.

Many throat-cutters and flayers at these slaughter centres have never received training in the proper procedures of animal slaughtering and flaying. They depend on their long-time experience to count themselves skilled. Many throat cutters are of the Muslim faith, and so are presumed to have been trained to ensure they do their job as per the requirements of their religion. But this is an assumption and it does not contribute to the production of high quality hides and skins because, their focus is on the meat.

Poor market intelligence 
Skewed market intelligence on the prices of hides and skins offered by tanneries, gives middlemen an opportunity to take advantage and set prices as low as Shs500 and Shs00 per kilogramme of a fresh hide/skin, compared to Shs4,000 per kilogramme, offered by the tanneries.

Such low prices give no incentive for proper handling and curing. So even though a centre might invest in modest value addition technology of wet salting the hides and skins, to prevent putrefaction, before they are bought by middlemen, the price of salted hides and skins, at a paltry Shs1,200 per kilogramme is still unappealing.

Recommendations
The hides and skins value chain is constrained by several challenges which must be addressed to at least realise optimum market potential. Areas that need urgent attention include improvements in recovery and quality through training at the farm level, and at slaughter centres particularly in best slaughter practices. The wet salting technology needs to be up-scaled so as to benefit more dealers. 

The value chain could benefit from enhanced government/private partnerships with synergies actualised along the chain paying particular attention to links where most value is lost or added. The government’s role should be mostly facilitative and regulatory, while the role of the private sector should be supportive and participatory.

The writer, Duncan Kayiira, is a leather technologist at BDO East Africa