Bones Adding to the Revenue in Bangladesh

November 23, 2011

economy

Bones Adding to the Revenue

Faizul Khan Tanim visits the city's Hazaribagh area to find a thriving business of cattle bones

No matter how much stench there is,behind it all lurks a revenue earning source of immense potential. Business during Eid-ul-Azha soars to maximum as cattle organs and bones, being valuable items in addition to the usual hide of the animals slaughtered during the festival are produced and sold at fascinating prices.

These extracts come in three types – bones, horns and gonads. The bones are broken into one and half inches sizes to be packed in sacks.

Each sack of 75 Kilograms machine-crushed bones were sold at Tk 1400 this year compared to Tk 675 in 2005 and each year the rates are going up.

One of the biggest entrepreneurs and traders Abdul Mannan Bhola Miah, who started this trade right after our Liberation War from the Hazaribagh area, spread over a land of eight Katha, said, “My business took firm shape around 1988 and ever since that time Opsonin and Beximco Pharma - pharmaceutical companies - are the largest buyers, among others, of crushed bones to produce capsule shells according to my best knowledge.

“We gather around 50 tonnes of bones and organs each month, but the collection rises to 200 to 300 tonnes a month during Eid-Ul-Azha. The best part about this business is it does not require either water or gas, just plenty of warm sunlight”, Miah added with a smile.

The central accumulating places of most slaughtered animal bones are Hazaribagh tannery and Sayedabad Mridhabari areas, where turnover reaches crores of Taka each year. And this becomes hugely possible only when the prices of cattle are very reasonable.

Bhola Miah explained the whole process – bones are dried under the sun and fed into machines while horns and other organs are also dried to be later put into sacks and readied for sales.

Big chunks of bones are broken into smaller pieces, which are later weighed and filled in sacks. Of the four categories of bone chips, Bangladeshi companies use two categories of small chips while the larger categories are exported.

Another trader Aslam Sheikh said, “The bones in the sacks are sorted out and left to ferment after which they are sun-dried for a long period of time. The dried bones go to the gelatin factory. After gelatin is produced, they are sent to another factory to produce capsule cells. These capsule cells are then supplied to major pharmaceutical companies in the country”.

Miah added more that, these bones, which are taken by the pharmaceutical companies essentially, and then chicken feed producing companies and melamine factories, are sold at around Tk 18,500 per tonne. Opsonin alone takes 40 tonnes during the three months around Eid-Ul-Azha times and 20 tonnes in the other months.

Bhola Miah's project in Hajaribagh alone employs around 1,000 workers. About 5,000 people are indirectly involved with the business, and this trade is becoming more prosperous every year. He believes that this sort of factory should always be established near industrial areas where the heavy stench will not affect residents of any other areas.

The horns are sold at around Tk 11,000 to factories producing comb, button and X-Ray films. This business in particular is suffering as few traders are mixing other elements with the horns to make quick money.This is harming this sector badly.

And finally the gonad parts are sold at Tk 10,000 per maund, the highest selling and profit fetching items, which go to China via Myanmar to produce special kind of soup and it is a delicacy.

Traders say that there are almost 60 factories dealing with crushed bones of which almost 11 are in Dhaka and the rest all over the country.

Informed sources said that Bangladesh earned nearly 700 million taka in the 2009-2010 fiscal year by only exporting animal bones.

*This article was first published in The Independent's Weekend Magazine November 18 2011 - http://www.theindependentdigital.com/index.php?opt=view&page=57&date=2011-11-18