America's North Shore Journal

The U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers (USACE) is improv­ing qual­ity of life and the envi­ron­ment here through the ren­o­va­tion of the Nasiriyah Meat Pro­cess­ing Plant.

Accord­ing to USACE Project Engi­neer Greg Croon, prior to rehab­bing, the butch­ers could only process a few ani­mals each day due to the poor con­di­tions of the plant.

“Most pro­cess­ing is tak­ing place at var­i­ous sites inside the town­ship which is out­side of any con­trolled health and envi­ron­men­tal frame­work,” Croon said. “Local leg­is­la­tion requires ani­mal butcher­ing only inside the facil­ity. How­ever, as the old facil­ity was so neglected and run­down, there was no fea­si­ble ground for the munic­i­pal author­i­ties to enforce this law.”

Croon added that if no action was taken to pro­vide an appro­pri­ate pro­cess­ing envi­ron­ment, the present con­di­tions may lead to seri­ous health haz­ards for the urban population.

The U.S. Depart­ment of State’s Dhi Qar Provin­cial Recon­struc­tion Team rec­om­mended a total rehab of the old facil­ity. “The reha­bil­i­ta­tion of the pro­cess­ing plant will allow healthy meat pro­cess­ing pro­ce­dures for the town­ship of Nasiriyah and neigh­bor­ing vil­lages,” said Dhi Qar PRT Agri­cul­tural Advi­sor, Giu­liano Masini.

“This will reflect pos­i­tively not only on the over­all health envi­ron­ment of the urban area but should increase rev­enues gen­er­ated by improved stor­age, increased meat pro­cess­ing and han­dling capac­ity and higher qual­ity standards.”

To alle­vi­ate the unhealthy con­di­tions, the USACE’s Iraqi con­trac­tor, Al-Rafdain Com­pany, is also installing new, pre­fab­ri­cated ancil­lary build­ings for meat by-products pro­cess­ing, meat chillers, con­struc­tion of a waste treat­ment unit and a new water sup­ply sys­tem, sup­ply of pro­cess­ing equip­ment and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of some fea­tures inside the main pro­cess­ing hall at a cost of $2.5 million.

Train­ing on han­dling and main­te­nance of the new equip­ment is being pro­vided as part of the sup­ply con­tract. “This is a key point to the suc­cess of the enter­prise,” Masini said.

It is esti­mated that given the high demand of meat and the increas­ing urban pop­u­la­tion, the plant will gen­er­ate rev­enues that will cover the oper­a­tion, main­te­nance and finan­cial costs. How­ever, stressed Masini, the city must work hard on a good man­age­ment plan, appoint a qual­i­fied admin­is­tra­tor and skilled tech­ni­cal per­sons to run this renewed facil­ity with mod­ern busi­ness methods.

As an added ben­e­fit, the newly reha­bil­i­tated plant is expected to employ about 120 work­ers daily. “The plant will grow from 20 to 65 butch­ers, at least twice as many will be oper­at­ing in the reha­bil­i­tated premises and other jobs will be cre­ated down­stream,” said Masini.

MNF-I