Story:
Police raid found Dog Meat in the Ashoka Hotels Kitchen and other Restaurants at various places of Nagpur, Jammu, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Karimnagar and Nizamabad
Other Versions
(Hindi)
भारत के इन होटलों में मिलता है कुत्ते का मीट
Fact Check:
Various messages doing rounds online warn consumers in India saying Police raid found dog meat in some hotel kitchens and restaurants. They suggest sale of dog meat in place of regular meat in Biryani and other food items. The messages mention the incident took place in different places like Nagpur, Jammu, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Karimnagar and Nizamabad. They also accompany some pictures (in video as well) showing the police raid and the skinned dog meat allegedly found inside the Ashoka hotel and others. The claims are mixture of hoax and facts, explained in this article.
Origin of Claims: Dog Meat Found Inside Hotels
These messages circulated on social media earlier in 2018 also claiming a Police raid found Dog meat inside the Kitchen of Ashoka Hotel in Howrah, Kolkata. The messages accompanied various pictures allegedly proving the same. Other versions of the story (in Telugu language as well) later on also claimed some hotels, especially of Muslims are into such food fraud. They say those hotels are using oil extracted from dead animal bones in place of Cooking oil and Dalda and ask people to share the warning with everyone.
Actual Incident at The Ashoka Hotel
Although the stories in circulation mention various places, a related incident took place at Ashoka Hotel in Howrah, Kolkata in early May 2018. A food inspection team from Kolkata Municipal Corporation raided many restaurants and eateries around New Market and other areas. They seized and destroyed over 100kg stale (rotten) meat. Officials said the seized meat (and also fish) was fungal infected. The team also collected meat samples from some of the raided places and sent them to state forensic lab for testing. Owner of the Ashoka Hotel in Howrah said, “We don’t store or serve meat from carcass of any other animal or bird. We had frozen chicken and mutton stored. But we didn’t quite understand that how it became fungal-infected and ended up cooking and serving some of this meat to customers today”. The video below shows some glimpses from the raid at the Ashoka hotel.
The raids took place after reports claiming meat of dogs and cats collected from dump yards are used in eateries – mixed up with meat. Earlier, in late April 2018, law-enforcement agencies found 20 tonnes of rotten carcass meat in a factory. Officials suspected the meat is from dead animals like stray dogs and cats. Allegedly, the carcass meat is mixed with fresh meat and treated with chemicals at very low temperatures for 4-5 days before packing and selling to restaurants. Police believe the meat was supplied to sellers of frozen food items like sausages, meatballs, ham and salami in eateries and departmental stores in Kolkata and neighboring areas like Jharkhand, Odisha and Bihar. Police arrested ten people, including Manik Mukherjee, an expelled CPI(M) leader in connection with the case. The video below shows a news report on it.
Carcass Meat Spread Fear
These messages about alleged use of carcass meat spread wide through social media. It led to significant drop in sale of non-vegetarian food in Kolkata eateries. Consequently, the Hotel and Restaurants Association of Eastern India (HRAEI) issued an urgent advisory. It asked their members to stick to buying meat only from registered suppliers. For one thing, this is not the first time such allegations of dog meat use surfaced and scared consumers. In 2016, similar allegations claimed dog meat is served with Biryani in Shah Ghouse Hotel of Hyderabad.
The claims about Animal Bone Powder and Bone Oil use in Toothpaste, Hotel Industry became popular in 2015 and earlier. As a matter of fact, some such incidents did take place in past in outskirt areas in India and Pakistan.
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