Meat sales take a hit

Meat sales usually soar on Sundays, but March 18 proved to be an anomaly. Because of Ugadi, there were very few people buying mutton, chicken and seafood. Meat shops and markets wore an unusually deserted look.

In a survey conducted two years ago, it was found that Telangana state had the largest non-vegetarian population in the country.

According to that report, about 99 per cent of the residents of the state were nonvegetarians. However, on Sunday, a majority of Telugu families abstained from eating meat because of Ugadi, and most Christians observed Lent.

Meat sales were only 25 to 30 per cent of the regular Sunday sales. Ram Reddy, the MD of Sneha Farms, said that chicken sales were three times higher on Sundays as compared to other days of the week. He said that the consumption of chicken in the state capital was usually in the range of 12 lakh kilos to 15 lakh kilos on Sundays. He added that sales were only a third of that on March 18, and a bulk of the amount was purchased by hotels and restaurants.

Mohd Saleem, a retail mutton seller, said that sale of red meat was just onefourth of the usual Sunday sales.

“If a big Hindu festival falls on a weekday, most mutton sellers shut their shops in anticipation of poor business. Because it was a Sunday, sellers kept their shops open with half the quantity of mutton. But most of it remained unsold,” he said.

The situation was no different at the Musheerabad fish market, the largest wholesale seafood market in the city. On Sundays, the market usually receives 50 trucks bearing nearly 200 tonnes of seafood. But on Ugadi, the number of trucks was much less. Members of the Musheerabad Association said that only 25 to 30 percent of the fish was sold.