Veterinarians made 52 kg of plastics out of a cow

An innocent animal in Tamil Nadu has just woken up from the worst nightmare of its life.

Recently, Munirathnam, a cattle rearer from Vellore of Tamil Nadu, reportedly brought his cow to TANUVAS on a suspected stomach pain for his livestock. As per a source, Munirathnam reached out to a local government aided pet clinic and later reached out to Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University under the guidance of that clinic.

P.Selvaraj, Professor of Veterinary Clinical Medicine at TANUVAS, said that they suspected some foreign material would have stuck in the cow's stomach. Hence they subjected the cow under Ultra-sound scan and X-ray and got the same as expected. The cow was taken to surgery as soon as they discovered objects in its stomach.

A handful of Post Graduate students at TANUVAS under the guidance of Dr. Balasubramanian, Director of Clinics at TANUVAS, operated out around 52 kg of plastic materials. This was the first time to fish out this sum of foreign material from a cow. However, pet clinics around Tamil Nadu are reporting such kind of cases frequently said the doctors.

They have operated the cow for more than 5 hours and succeeded it. Dr. Valavan, one of the doctors, took part in the operation, said, the cow was diagnosed correctly and taken care before and after the surgery. The cow's stomach was refilled with bran, bolus, and jaggery as the cow lost cud to bring back the food to mouth and mash. The animal has been taken under observation.

Dr. Balasubramaniam said the cow's stomach kept swelling because of the eaten plastics apart from its regular food items. The cow's stomach accumulated with 75% of plastic materials like plastic bags and needles that have even stopped defecation and urination. They could have also killed the animal if it was unnoticed. However, the animal is now stable, and this case would have cost around 35,000 rupees if a private organization handled it. At TANUVAS, Munirathanam paid just RS.130 for the entire process.

Apart from the strict ban on plastic in India as ordered by the Prime Minister, the environment is still suffering from existing plastic garbages. Plastic Flood that happened in Nilgiris was such an example.

This incident has saddened the doctors who performed the operation and also emphasizing the civilians to be responsible and to not to use plastics.

There are thousands of animals, literally innocents, dying around the world because of plastic pollution. The world's governments must ban the use of plastics. However, the real success is keeping the environment clean, and that lay in the hands of people.