Oink Oink! No five-star morsels for Goa pigs

Pigs reared in Goa will no longer get to eat the choicest leftovers from five-star hotels.

A recent order by the Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) has banned all the 36 five-star hotels in the coastal tourist state from back-channelling leftovers, veggy and fruit peels and pulp to piggeries citing pollution concerns.

"What is happening is that the waste generated at five-star hotels is now merely being dumped at these piggeries. It's very messy. Some piggeries even have dumps of garbage," GSPCB chairman Jose Noronha told reporters Thursday.

Pork, along with beef, is standard cuisine for the Christians in Goa, who account for nearly 30 percent of the state's population.

Most Goan villages still have rudimentary piggeries, which slaughter pigs for sale in the local market.

Tourism and an increasing demand for pork has also spurred the setting up of modern piggeries which often have tie-ups with five-star hotels for pig food, mainly wet, organic garbage generated in the hotel kitchens, which cater to thousands of guests and employees everyday.

Noronha now says that hotels need to do more as far as garbage management was concerned and that many hotels, who have the mandatory equipment for garbage management, simply do not use it. They prefer sending their garbage to piggeries, instead, he said.

"We noticed these lapses during some inspections. Therefore, the order has been issued banning all five-star hotels from sending their garbage to these piggeries," he said.