Moroccan Interior Minister Defends Meat Safety Amid Slaughterhouse Concerns

During an oral question session at the House of Advisors, parliamentary adviser Ismail Allaoui mentioned the failure of the program to modernize slaughterhouses and markets, highlighting the "fragility" of their infrastructure and "the lack of equipment, lack of maintenance and lack of cleanliness in the slaughterhouses". "Mr. Minister, we don’t know what we’re eating, and since the day I saw the state of some slaughterhouses, I’ve stopped eating meat," he said to the Minister of the Interior.

In response, Abdelouafi Laftit stated that all the slaughterhouses in the kingdom, in cities or in markets, "have specialized doctors who certify the quality of the meats and mark those fit for consumption", assuring that all the meats from the slaughterhouses are "fit for consumption". The Minister of the Interior insisted on "the need to avoid confusion, and that supervision is carried out continuously," relays Al3omk.

Laftit also recalled that the Ministry of Agriculture has established high-quality slaughterhouses in major cities as part of the Green Morocco Plan, and indicated that the ultimate goal is to equip all Moroccan cities and communities with high-quality slaughterhouses. In Morocco, there are about 180 slaughterhouses in urban areas and about 750 in weekly rural markets, which produce more than 300,000 tons of meat per year, the Minister of the Interior said.

However, the government member noted the dilapidation of the infrastructure in the slaughterhouses, the lack of safety and cleanliness conditions, the lack of maintenance and the inadequacy of working and management methods. All these problems are due to the low capacity of local authorities to cover the maintenance costs of this equipment, explained Laftit.