Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses informal and formal pork slaughterhouses in Kampala, Uganda. It focuses on themes including urban livelihoods, disease management and the aesthetics of pork meat in order to demonstrate the importance of informal slaughterhouses within the Ugandan pork market.

Paper long abstract:

Ugandans reportedly eat more pork meat than any other nation in East Africa. Despite this, in Kampala there is only one government approved slaughtering facility- Wambizzi. With increasing pork consumption and limited formal slaughtering facilities, informal slaughterhouses have proliferated throughout the city. Subsequently, pork meat produced in informal slaughterhouses is supplying a vast number of butchers throughout Kampala.

Based upon data from 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork on the Ugandan peri-urban to urban pig value chain, this paper considers the ability of informal slaughterhouses to manage diseases. Informal slaughterhouses are considered to have significant public health implications for pork consumers, particularly in relation to the zoonotic disease cysticercosis. Wambizzi, conversely, is considered to meet international food safety standards. However, in practice the visibility and removal of cysts is similar within both informal and formal slaughterhouses. In both sites actors decide whether a carcass is diseased based on the aesthetics of the pork meat. While in Wambizzi meat inspectors identify cysts in pork in order to produce meat 'fit for human consumption', in informal slaughterhouses workers remove cysts in order to achieve the highest price when selling meat on to butchers. Both methods result in visible cysts being removed from pork meat.

Informal slaughterhouses, therefore, do not necessarily produce substandard meat to Wambizzi. Through demonstrating the value of informal slaughterhouses within the Ugandan pork market, it is argued that these spaces should be not be criminalised but instead recognised as legitimate suppliers of pork meat within Kampala